Objects in Space
by cupid-painted-blind
Summary: Book One of As the Turn of the Worlds. Aang never woke up from the iceberg, and the world went on without him.  Now, three millennia later, the world is highly advanced, the Avatar is a barely-remembered myth, and a man smuggles a large box onto a transport ship. Fusion with Firefly.
1. Prelude: the Matryoshka Doll

_Title._ As the Turn of the Worlds, Book One  
><em>Author.<em> andromeda3116/cupid-painted-blind  
><em>Warnings.<em> Some gore, disturbing imagery, surgery and other medical situations; mentions of sex and sexuality  
><em>Pairings.<em> Zuko/Katara (established relationship), Smellerbee/Longshot (established relationship), Sokka/Suki, eventual Mai/Jet, eventual Toph/Haru  
><em>Author's Note.<em> Thanks to _somniumweb_ and _feral-shrew_ for looking over this during the editing process and giving me pointers. This is a fusion with the world of the TV show and movie _Firefly_ and _Serenity_, however I made a concerted effort to write this so that those unfamiliar with them could still understand it. If there is anything you don't understand, and isn't explained in the link on my profile, please feel free to ask me and I will explain. In fact, even if you do know the show, you might want to check out that link, because there's a lot of backstory there that didn't make it into the final cut.

* * *

><p>Aang never woke up from the iceberg, and the world went on without him, and without the Avatar. Over the next three thousand years, technology advanced astronomically - literally, the people of the overcrowded world taking to the stars, colonizing a whole new solar system with dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Now, the Avatar is a barely-remembered myth, bending is regarded as a relic of a rightfully-dead past - and any children showing bending talent are scooped up by the government for "teaching" and are never seen again - and only two of the original countries still exist: the Fire Nation, part of the Union of Allied Planets and still one of the most powerful forces in it, and the Water Tribe, clinging to life on the Outer Rim, fighting desperately for the dream of independence. The most recent civil war ended seven years ago, in a landslide victory for the Alliance - but that doesn't mean that the fight for independence is over<em>.<em>

_Book One: Objects in Space_: Katara is a Companion - a high-class prostitute - working in the capital city of Sihnon, and has been lucky enough to be hand-picked by the Princess of the Fire Nation to attend to her surly brother. However, there's strife in the family that spills over into her life: when she inadvertently exposes the princess's plot to kill her father, she finds herself in prison for conspiracy, and is forced to call in a favor from an old friend, another Companion who travels the border with a band of thieves. Meanwhile, a man named Sokka is on the hunt for his long-lost sister, Prince Zuko is exiled for his sister's crime, and a man named Iroh smuggles a large box onto a transport ship...

* * *

><p><strong>As the Turn of the Worlds<strong>

Book One: Objects in Space  
>Prelude: <strong>the Matryoshka Doll<strong>

_"You know what the first rule of flying is? Love. You can know all the math in the 'Verse, but you take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off, just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love's what keeps her in the air when she ought to fall, tells you she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her home."  
>-<em>Malcolm Reynolds, _Serenity_

(on the cutter-class spaceship _blue moon_)

"What have you got for me?" he asked, lounging in his fuzzy chair and tinkering with the matryoshka doll that he always kept near. "You mentioned a job to Sihnon. That still open?"

"Sure," Faith replied on the other side of the cortex. He tried valiantly not to sneer - he did _not_ like Faith, but ever since his disastrous run-in with Patience last year, he'd been forced to turn to the old woman's worst enemy, on the _other_ side of Whitefall. Faith wasn't as rich as Patience, didn't have as many jobs (and the ones she did have were usually less-than lucrative) but she also wasn't as likely to fill him with bullets for breathing in her sacred presence.

Plus, he had it on good authority that she was just _aching_ to get into his pants, so there was that.

"What's the cargo?"

"Illegal shinies for the teeming underground drug rings," she answered coolly, and he swallowed a snarky response. He didn't have the luxury of refusing any jobs, legal or illegal, especially if they were one-man jobs like this one was supposed to be - he'd tried to hire a crew once, but his obsessive tendencies (well, tendency), his cramped ship, and his perpetual lack of funds had quickly run them off, leaving him to do all the heavy lifting by himself. He only really minded during those awful stretches through the black where he had nothing but his thoughts and memories for company. "You in?"

"Of course. I'm out of options," he explained sourly, "and the Core is just about all that's left. May as well get started."

"You're _still_ on this crazy search?" Faith asked, a mocking tone in her voice. "When will you give up?"

"When I find her," he replied through clenched teeth, "or at least her body, so I can take her home."

"She's just your sister," she said, like he didn't already know. "Why do you care so much? I haven't seen my family in, God, _years_."

"Well, you wouldn't understand the concept of familial love, then," he said flatly. "I promised I'd look out for her. I've gotta find her to do that."

"Who's going to care if you don't?"

He bit his tongue; the truth was, no one would care. He'd made the promise to his dying mother years and years ago, and while his father might hold him to it, his father had also gone off the deep end after the war and still held out for Independence. He believed in the cause, too, but he also knew when to let a lost cause _go._

This, however, wasn't one of those times. His sister was _out there_ somewhere, and maybe she needed help or maybe she didn't, but as her older brother, it was his duty - the last thing he had left in the entire universe - to help her in whatever way he could. But wherever she was, she wasn't giving him any clues, if she even knew he was still alive (or cared one way or the other; although a part of him refused to accept the possibility that she _was_ out there and safe and just didn't _want_ to be found, he had to acknowledge that it was possible).

He stared hard at the doll sitting innocently beside the feed - he hadn't opened it in over seven years, but he knew without having to look what all the other dolls inside of it were. His father's (badly-carved) face looked at him from the largest doll, and within that doll was his mother, and then himself, and then - the smallest doll was his little sister.

"_I_ will," he replied shortly. "Where's the pick-up?"

Faith sighed theatrically before giving him the coordinates to his newest drop. "You know the drill. You get half from me when you pick up the cargo, half from Jun when you drop it off. I'll see you there," she said, and then cut the transmission.

Sokka fell back into his chair, exhausted.


	2. Chapter One: Firefly Class

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter one:<strong> firefly-class<strong>

_"You know the first rule of combat? Shoot them before they shoot you."_  
>-Faye Valentine, <em>Cowboy Bebop<em>

(at the mount penglai companion house in the fire nation capital city of lu'wong on sihnon)

"Bad news," Suki said.

Katara tried not to groan; it had been a bad week already, and if _Suki_ thought this news was bad, it was going to be a day-ruiner. "What is it?" she asked, wincing in anticipation.

"He's applied again," Suki replied, and shot her a sympathetic look, "straight to Laila."

She froze. Katara could do just about anything - really, she wasn't one of the top Companions on Sihnon for nothing - but she drew the line at servicing Admiral Zhao. He had spearheaded the invasion of the Water Tribes and all-but annihilated her home planet, and she was _dealing with it_ in her own way, accepting the fact that he lived in Sihnon, not far down the road (and had been to several of the other Companions already). She was good at that, at swallowing her still-simmering rage and putting on her best Companion face, as long as she never had to interact with him beyond a vague, occasional hello.

He had applied to meet her four times already, and she'd always found a way out of the meetings, either by hastily scheduling someone else or spontaneously coming down with a contagious illness, but if he had gone to the Madam - she had no way out.

"Katara," Suki said, standing up and snapping her out of it. "It'll be okay."

She looked at Suki, and the other girl's eyes said it all: no, it really _wouldn't_ be okay. If she hadn't already betrayed her roots by coming to and working in Sihnon, then by having sex with Zhao she _certainly_ would. Not to mention the fact that she wasn't sure she would ever be able to wash the horrid feeling of his touch from her skin.

"Look, Jin saw him a few weeks ago, and she said he's not so bad," Suki said fervently, walking around from her desk and placing a hand on her shoulder. "He's a bit greedy, but not abusive or overly rough or anything. You can pretend he's someone else, and..." she trailed off.

Katara took a deep breath. "You're right," she whispered. "It's not... It'll be all right. I can handle it."

"I'll see what I can do," Suki replied quietly. "Maybe I can get you another meeting with someone higher-up than hi - what about the prince?" she asked suddenly, as though just thinking about it. Katara tried not to wince visibly.

The prince was the main reason she had the reputation and status she had: several months ago, he had been roped into meeting her by the machinations of his meddling sister. It had gone quite well, but what Suki didn't know (or, at least, she _hoped_ Suki didn't know) was that he had been back several times since then, under the table, both to keep out of the limelight and because she didn't get along very well the new Madam who had replaced Lily about a half a year ago, and anything that took money out of Laila's pocket was just fine in Katara's book. Besides, he was attractive, likeable enough, and _creative_ in bed. Win-win, as far as she was concerned.

Unless Laila figured it out. She wouldn't be able to do anything to the prince, but Katara was another story - she wouldn't lose her license over it, but she would have to find a new place to work, or do like Mai and start travel-Companioning.

On the other hand, Suki had a point: if anyone could get her out of this meeting with Zhao, it was Zuko. She just didn't like the thought of asking him for any favors; it felt _unprofessional_ in the worst way, like she was _using _him, and with his delicate ego, she didn't want him to feel used. Especially considering that he regularly felt like a pawn in someone else's game (she knew because she acted as his therapist, in more ways than one), and she was where he went to _escape_ that feeling.

"I don't know," she replied, trying to make it sound ambiguous, "I haven't seen him since that meeting..."

It wasn't, strictly speaking, a lie; Katara was good at lying without actually lying. Unfortunately, Suki was also good at reading between the lines.

"_Right_," she said airily, smirking, "and all those times you're locked up in your room doing _yoga_ are _totally_ innocent." On some level, she was aware that Suki was fishing for information, but it didn't stop her from turning bright red all the same. "Ha! I _knew_ it!" Suki crowed, and then clapped a hand over her mouth, still grinning. "I won't tell."

"There's nothing to tell," she insisted, biting her lip and trying not to laugh. Suki always had a way of cheering her up when she was down - it was one of the reasons they were friends. Most of the Companions considered themselves "above" the lowly secretary, but Katara liked her: she was snarky, funny, and had a running commentary on most of the patrons of the House and _all_ of the denizens. Suki knew _everyone's_ secrets, but most of the girls didn't realize just how dangerous she could be for them - not even Laila noticed her constant presence.

"Hey, you're keeping money out of Laila's greedy paws," Suki said, waving a hand. "Your secret is _safe_ with me. And my fantasies, because really, I've seen shirtless pictures of him and, whoo," she whistled, and fanned herself dramatically. "I'm jealous."

"I love that your political opinions disappear in the face of beautiful men," she replied sardonically, and Suki snorted.

"It's all right. I can tie a gag around his mouth, and then we're _all good._"

Katara couldn't help it: she burst out laughing.

* * *

><p>(on the firefly-class transport ship <em>freedom<em>)

Mai was deeply considering mass homicide.

"This must be the stupidest idea you've _ever_ had," she said, arms crossed. The Captain, a rugged man who went by the name Jet (she suspected it was a pseudonym, but hadn't yet been able to find proof), glared at her.

"Sticking a thorn in the Alliance's paw, getting medical supplies to them that need it, _and_ getting filthy rich? How could this be a bad idea?"

"You're trying to rob a Core hospital. Have you ever, in fact, _been_ to the Core?"

"That's where you come in, Ambassador," he replied, with his best "charming" smile. She scowled.

"I'm not involved with this."

"And yet," he said airily, "you're in the room. Why don't you do our little Tophlet a favor here, and help her with the mechanics?"

From beneath the monstrous mule that they were converting (slowly) into a medivac came a muffled, "Toph does not need help. Get to painting and don't you dare call me Tophlet!" The (bare) feet sticking out from under the thing kicked wildly until one contacted with Jet, who winced.

"I'm the _Captain_," Jet snapped, "I don't _paint._"

"Yeah, well, you do today," Toph replied, wrenching herself out from under the mule, grease splattered all over her face, hair, and the weird visor she wore over her eyes. Mai had figured out early on that Toph was blind and somehow used her increased sense of touch to "see," but the visor never failed to make her uncomfortable. It didn't help that Toph was confrontational, blatant, and grumpy on the best of days. "Why don't you do it, Ambassador?" she said, snatching a towel from the floor and rubbing her hands violently. Mai didn't quite understand why she bothered - her fingerless gloves had taken most of the damage from the intensive work, and one was sporting a vicious, slightly-bloody tear that she didn't even seem to have noticed - but decided not to ask, since with Toph, not asking was generally the safest choice.

"If Captains don't paint, then Companions _certainly_ don't," she replied, and sidestepped the now-greasy towel that Toph threw in her direction. It was eerie how _good_ her aim actually was.

"So, wait, if I get to painting, you'll actually do constructive work on this boat?" Jet asked, gasping theatrically and blinking rapidly. "I'll have to see that to believe it."

"I don't care _who _does it, but I am _not_ doing all this work so you idiots can bitch over who's gonna paint it. Suck it up, kids, and get to _frickin'_ work."

"You don't give me orders," Jet snapped, and Toph crossed her arms.

"Look, _powder monkey_, I'm PMS-ing like _hell_, up to my stupid _eyeballs_ in work, and Longshot tells me that the gorram primary buffer panel is loose _again_ and I gotta patch it up 'cause I'm the only person who knows anything about keeping this boat from turning into a flaming ball of _death_ and _pain_, and you are _not_ paying me enough to listen to you and Mai's sexual tension, okay? Either go to work or _go away_. Jeez," she added under her breath, growling at the mule.

"I have tea that will help with the PMS," Mai offered, deftly ignoring the comment about her and Jet, and Toph perked up a bit.

"Really?" she asked, at the same time Jet did.

"Please give her some," he said coolly. "And Toph?" he added, grabbing her by the hair, "_don't_ call me powder monkey again, _dong ma?"_

She swatted his hand away and huffed. "Whatever. Get me this tea, will you?"

Part of Mai wished that she hadn't offered, but since the alternative was sitting in the cargo bay with Jet and Toph snapping at each other (or, worse, sitting in the dining room with the Duke and Pipsqueak's ever-going poker game), she supposed it would suffice. The crew's balance was always _off_ when Bee and Longshot were sequestered in their bunk, which was far too often, in Mai's opinion.

At least Katara would get a kick out of hearing this story.

"Ugh," Toph said, the moment she set foot in Mai's shuttle - the first time, she realized, that the mechanic had ever had cause to be there - and recoiled violently, "_carpet_," she spat, like it was covered in acid.

"Yes," Mai replied sardonically while finding a teapot that she wasn't very attached to (since Toph had a reputation of breaking anything she didn't like), "I have rugs in my shuttle. It helps keep me warm."

"I can't _see_ on carpet," Toph grumbled, and felt around for the edge of the rug until she reached bare floor, and proceeded to walk across the shuttle as though she was a child playing "the floor is lava." "Also, you _do_ know that I go through hell _on a daily basis_ to keep it from getting too hot in this ship, right? It's not cold by default here."

"I know," Mai answered, setting the tea kettle on a burner. "That's why I don't complain."

Toph's perpetual foul mood seemed to ease up at this. "Well, good," she said, sounding a bit lost. "I'd be mad if you did."

"And you would be right," she replied absently, folding her hands into her sleeves. "I heard a rumor that we were picking up passengers in Persephone."

"If Cap'n doesn't go through with his stupid plan," Toph replied, propping her feet up on Mai's low table. Mai's blood pressure skyrocketed at this - if there was anything that she _could not _abide, it was people getting her things dirty, and Toph's feet were _always_ disgusting - but she swallowed all the mean comments she could come up with. "Personally, I think we should wait on the heist, at least until we get to a better Core planet. I mean, Persephone's cool and all, but it's hardly Londinium, you know?"

"Yes," she muttered, and glanced at the tea kettle, _willing_ it to heat up faster. "Or Sihnon," she added, a little wistfully. She didn't _regret_ leaving her home - not often, at any rate - but she missed it sometimes, particularly the people, and one visit per year wasn't enough to really stay in touch with the friends she had left behind.

"I dunno, isn't Londinium, like, the big kahuna?" Toph mused, wiggling her toes and burrowing deeper into the padded bench, sighing a bit. "I've never been to either planet, at least, not really. I mean, I've _been_ there," she added, shrugging, "but I've never gotten off the ship." She didn't mention that it was because she never _wanted_ to get off the ship - Mai had invited everyone to go to dinner with her on Sihnon the last time she was there, and only Longshot and Bee had agreed to join her, Jet growling about Alliance food being poisoned or something, while the Duke and Pipsqueak were wanted criminals, and Toph had latched onto the engine and refused point-blank to leave, under pain of death or dismemberment.

Toph was a strange girl, that was certain.

"Yes, but Sihnon is the cultural heart of the 'Verse," she explained, and bit back a sigh of relief when the kettle whistled.

"That depends on the culture," Toph said, a strange coldness in her voice. "Me, I like the _culture_ of the outer rim, all horses and western expansion and stuff," she continued, gesturing wildly with her hands and grinning. "It's so much better than all this pseudo-Chinese _le-se_. No offense," she added. "You're cool, don't get me wrong, but I dunno, it just feels fake. Give me cowboys and Indians any day of the week."

"Do you even know what Indians are?" Mai asked, a little amused and a little intrigued. She'd made it a point until now to ignore the brash mechanic at any and all opportunity, and she didn't think she'd been wrong to do so, but she was discovering that Toph was interesting when she wasn't being openly hostile. "Or, for that matter, western expansion?"

"Eh," Toph answered, shrugging, and snatched the sugar bowl the moment Mai set it down, "I get what it means. Sort of. Earth That Was history, right?"

"Right," Mai replied, "but the, as you called it, 'pseudo-Chinese _le-se_' has roots that go back to the Age of Bending. Its history is much older and richer than that of the outer planets."

Toph snorted, and poured most of the sugar bowl into her cup of tea. (Mai started to say something, but decided against it.) "I don't buy any of that. People playing around with the classic elements? _Right._"

"So the legend goes," Mai said calmly, reigning in the urge to smack the bowl out of Toph's hands. At the rate she was going, she wouldn't have any _tea_ left in her cup! "They say that some benders still exist."

"Yeah, and I've got a Capissen-38 to sell you," Toph said, snorting again and draining her still-piping teacup, before shuddering and coughing. "I put _way_ too much sugar in that," she added weakly, and Mai snickered.

"I considered warning you, but you seemed certain."

Toph did something strange with her mouth, as though she was trying to unhinge her jaw, and then licked her lips. "Yeah, next time, let me know if I'm doing something that's gonna taste like death in a teacup, okay?"

"Of course. Would you like another cup?" Mai asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Nah, I've gotta get back to work, or Cap'n'll come in here and start tearing me a new one. Thanks, though," she added, and then stood up, stretching. "You know, you're not bad, Ambassador. In fact," she declared, pointing vaguely in Mai's direction, "you're kinda awesome. I hereby take back anything bad I ever said about you."

"Oh?"

Toph shrugged. "Yeah, I don't really remember, but I'm sure Cap'n's growled some things and I've agreed with him, you know? Anyway, I like you," she said firmly, and then punched Mai in the arm. Against her will, she yelped in pain and surprise. Toph grinned. "Bye, Mai!"

"Goodbye," she said, rubbing her arm confusedly.


	3. Chapter Two: Rose and Honey

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter two: <strong>rose and honey<br>**

_"Diplomats! The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank."_  
>-Montgomery Scott, <em>Star Trek<em>

(at the companion house)

The forced smile fell off her face the moment she ended the wave with Zhao, and she shuddered violently. How was she supposed to do this? The very thought made her skin crawl, and she wasn't entirely sure she could do her job with... _him._

"Knock-knock," her door said, and she turned to see Ty Lee poking her head in, followed by Jin, a lower-ranking Companion. "I heard the Admiral is gonna visit," she said, and winced, before barging in and bouncing onto Katara's bed. "I brought Jin, since she's seen him before and she can give you pointers on, like, what to say and stuff. Not that you need help!" she corrected herself hastily. "But. Um."

"It's all right," Katara replied, forcing herself to smile, "come in. I'll make tea. Do you have any preference?"

"I just had a pot in my room," Jin said, floating serenely to the bench. Jin didn't have the status that Katara had earned, but in the two years since she had come to the Companion House, she had proven herself a natural - something about the atmosphere she brought to a room set people at ease, and her sunny personality had won her a lot of friends.

"Mm, do you have any of that rose tea?" Ty Lee asked, flopping backward onto Katara's bed. "I just love this _bed_. I wish I had a bed this nice."

"If you were expected to use it more often," Jin said, raising an eyebrow, "they'd give you one."

"Oh, I use it all the time, I just don't get paid for it," Ty Lee grumbled. "Which is totally unfair."

"You really don't understand the concept of tact, do you?" Katara asked, measuring out a few teaspoons of rose tea and rifling through her cabinet for sugar, surreptitiously hiding the honey as she did. Ever since she'd been furtively seeing Zuko, she'd been running out of honey at an alarming rate - he liked his tea _sweet_, which was amusing, yes, but it was also taxing her reserves, and she couldn't request more without having to explain why she was suddenly hemorrhaging honey. She hadn't yet come up with a good enough excuse to give Laila, so she was forced to save it for meetings only. Unfortunately, Ty Lee also liked to sweeten tea beyond reason, which was sure to cause problems soon.

"Oh, I understand it," Ty Lee chirped, "I just don't care about it."

Jin giggled behind her hand. It was frustrating, really, how _cute_ the girl was, when she didn't even have to _try_. Katara was a right disaster unless she was in Companion Mode (as Mai had dubbed it early on), and could hardly be called _cute_, even by the most ardent of admirers - beautiful, maybe, or sexy if she was _really_ trying, but that quality of endearing, almost-childlike appeal had always eluded her. Then again, she'd overheard Jin ranting to Suki once about how obnoxious it was to be called "cute" by a client when she was doing her best to be sexy, so maybe it was a case of the grass being greener on the other side.

"Being a Companion involves far more than just sex, Ty Lee," Katara said, trying not to make it sound like she was playing Mother to anyone. Mai in particular hated it when she did that.

"Sure, sure, there's all those classes you had to take, I know, I couldn't pass them. I could be a prostitute!" she exclaimed suddenly, jumping up, but then her face fell again. "Wait, no, I wouldn't get to choose my clients then. Hmm."

"I think you're doing pretty well for yourself," Jin said, still giggling. "Aren't you a gymnast, though? Why would you be a prostitute when you've got other marketable skills?"

"'Cause it's more fun," she replied, like it was obvious, and Katara choked on air. "What? It is. You can't tell me that getting laid all the time isn't the best part of your job!"

"I didn't know you were a gymnast," Katara said, desperately changing the subject. Ty Lee bobbed her head.

"Yeah, before the war, I wanted to join the circus, but then my parents died..." she explained, shrugging. "Anyway, I practiced _all the time_ and drove my sisters out of their minds. It was too hard to find a job there after the war, so I came here to become a Companion, but, well, that didn't exactly work..."

"I'm sure you'll find something," Katara said soothingly, handing over a cup of tea to Ty Lee, who took a big sip and then blinked.

"D'you have honey?" she asked, and Katara tried not to wince.

"Yes, but I'm running low," she replied, "so I'm saving it for my clients."

"Speaking of," Jin said, segueing cleanly into the real topic before Ty Lee could start whining about honey, "Ty Lee told me you're seeing Zhao."

_Not if I can help it_, she thought, but said, "Yes, on Thursday. He's meeting me here," she added unnecessarily, and looked into her teacup as though some answer might swim out from it and dance around the edge.

"He's not _so_ bad," Jin said, looking thoughtful. "Arrogant, but you kind of expect that from high-ranking men. Didn't you see the prince a few months ago?" she asked, and then went on anyway. "You shouldn't have anything to be afraid of, then. Just treat him like you did the prince and it'll be fine. Quick, too, I should think," she muttered, and shot Katara a smirk. "I don't think he gets out a lot, if you know what I'm saying."

"So, wait," Ty Lee started, grinning and bouncing on the bed with barely-contained glee (and spilling tea on her hand), "you mean that Zhao only gets laid when he _pays for it? _Oh, that's _delicious!_"

"What do _you_ have against Zhao?" Katara asked, and poured herself a second cup. Ty Lee laughed.

"Nothing, really, I just think it's funny when guys have _no other choice_ but to pay a Companion for her time."

"It's not funny," Katara said admonishingly, but Ty Lee rolled her eyes.

"It is when it's a super-high-ranking guy."

"Who doesn't have a wife or children," Jin added, giving Ty Lee a significant look, "and works in a high-stress and extremely intense job. He's lonely, and he doesn't have anyone else to turn to. People like Zhao are why we're here, Ty Lee," she said, and a stab of guilt shot through Katara. Jin was right - and seeing Zhao in her capacity as a Companion wasn't _quite_ the same as seeing him outside of it, was it?

She just couldn't - she _couldn't._ Not with _Zhao._

Just as she was planning to say something about Companions having choices of their own (which, in retrospect, Jin and Ty Lee probably wouldn't have understood), a knock came - at the floor-length window. She gasped; only one person ever used that to reach her. Jin and Ty Lee both heard it as well, and knew that it meant something out of the ordinary - they both turned, first to the window and then to Katara. "Uh!" she started dumbly, and then Ty Lee grinned in a purely _feral_ way.

"Who's that?" she trilled, standing up, but Katara beat her to the window, thanking every spirit, god, and mythological hero she could think of for _curtains_.

"I - " she said, drawing a complete blank for an excuse. Luckily, Jin came to her rescue.

"Well, it's getting late," she said, sighing heavily. "Ty Lee, let's go. I've got _loads_ of laundry, I'll need help getting it all done."

"Oh, no," Ty Lee cried, hands on her hips. "I want to kno - mmph!" she mumbled, as Jin clapped a hand over her mouth and began to pull her out of the room. At the door, she glanced back and mouthed _I want details_ to Katara, who groaned. Once the door was shut, she opened the window and let a furiously blushing Zuko in.

"Sorry," he muttered, "I didn't know you had company."

"It's all right," she said, pulling the curtains to. "They're good friends, they won't spread any rumors. Well, Ty Lee might, but I don't think Jin will let her."

"Ty Lee?" he asked, looking vaguely confused. "_Hua_ Ty Lee?"

Katara nodded, unsurprised. Ty Lee's family had been _extremely_ high-ranking nobility before her parents had died nearly destitute - everyone had heard the scandal surrounding the Hua family's fall from grace. Of all of her sisters, Ty Lee had done noticeably best for herself.

"I used to know her," Zuko mused, sinking into the bench, "when we were kids. She was a good friend of my sister's."

"Really?" she asked, surprised at this bit - not that she would have known the royal family, but that bubbly, cheerful Ty Lee had actually been friends with the terrifying princess. "That seems... odd."

"It always did to me, too," he muttered, and began messing with her teapot. He had a way of doing that when he was nervous about something (which was, generally speaking, whenever he was around her), fidgeting with her things or with his sleeves or anything, really, he could get his hands on. She began making another pot of tea, idly wishing that she hadn't had tea with Ty Lee and Jin, or at least that Zuko had given her warning he was coming tonight. Usually, he tried to let her know when he'd show up, but she thought that something might have been bothering him, from the intense fidgeting he was doing and the way he wouldn't look at her.

"You're beginning to deplete my honey supplies," she said lightly, taking it from its hiding place and setting it on the table in front of him. He gave her a lopsided and somewhat forced smile.

"I can't help it," he replied.

They waited in silence for the water to boil, and then for the tea to steep. When she poured the tea, and he still hadn't spoken, she was starting to get uncomfortable. He was always taciturn, but this was just _unlike_ him; he had come here for a reason, and he wasn't the sort to drop in _just_for sex, especially unexpectedly, since he knew that she had clients to see and seemed diametrically opposed to walking in on her with another man. Finally, when she was about to break the silence out of sheer frustration, he spoke.

"I think my sister is plotting to kill me," he said abruptly, and she almost spilled her tea. He looked up at her, eyes blazing. "She's definitely planning _something._"

"Why? Do you think that, I mean," she asked, shaking her head a bit to clear it. This was a _big deal_ - far bigger than she, a mere Companion, was prepared to handle.

"She's been in the library a lot," he said, almost caressing the teacup in his anxiety, "and I... well, I tried to pay off a servant to look into it, but they're all so afraid of her they wouldn't..." he trailed off, and looked away. "So I went in at night and... spied on her, sort of. I just wanted to see what she was so interested in," he insisted, like he was scared she'd turn on him for violating his sister's privacy. Normally, she'd take issue with it, but considering the political climate he lived in, and also considering his sister, she understood the need for it. "Anyway, she's been reading up on lines of succession and old Fire Nation law, dating back thousands of years, some of the oldest scrolls and books we _have._ I didn't even know some of these laws _existed_ and I've been studying this since..." he trailed off again.

"What else?" Katara asked, voice barely above a whisper.

"She's been acting weird," he continued, draining his teacup in one large gulp and running a hand through his hair. "Friendly, which is weird for Azula. I just... I don't like it," he muttered. "She's _off._"

Katara set her teacup down, feeling scared and overwhelmed and wondering why Zuko had deigned to tell _her_ this - but then, he didn't have anyone else to confide in, did he? And he certainly didn't have anyone he could trust with _this_ kind of information, not since his uncle, the only other person he was comfortable around, had disappeared almost a week ago. He'd come to her then, as close as she had ever seen him to tears, angry and _hurt_ that the last person he trusted had _left him here_ - and now, this, while he was still reeling from the disappearance.

Something seemed _wrong_ about the whole thing, though, and she couldn't quite put her finger on it. "She's been friendlier lately?" she asked, chewing on her lip and thinking hard about that. Why would Azula be friendly? To move suspicion away from her if she did go through with it? "Just to you, or in general?"

"In general," he replied, leaning forward eagerly. "What is it?"

"That doesn't... it doesn't _feel_ right," she mused, looking anywhere but his eyes. "Why would she kill you?" she asked suddenly, and looked up. He made a face.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"No, that's... that's just _it_," she said, standing in agitation. "It _is_ obvious. Who else would kill you? If she wanted you dead, she'd be working on a scapegoat, someone she could pin... it... on..." she said slowly, the answer becoming clear. Zuko stood up as she fell into her seat.

"What?" he asked desperately, and she turned back, shakily, to the tea and poured herself another cup even though she didn't really want it.

"She doesn't want to kill _you_," she whispered, "don't you see?" She was horrified - this was the same type of thing that she had seen in the tribe. During the war, positions of leadership were coveted, and people had done nearly anything they could to earn power; it was one of the factors that had led to their relatively easy demise. Zhao had barely had to do anything, since the tribes were so busy tearing themselves apart. Her own father had gained power through someone else's mysterious disappearance, but he had been an only child; another tribe leader, Bato, had been killed by his brother, in an effort to remove all of the roadblocks to leadership.

"See _what?_" Zuko said sharply, dragging her away from the dark recesses of her memory. She looked up, straight into his eyes.

"She's going to kill your _father_ - " Katara said, clutching her teacup hard, "and _blame_ you." He jolted a bit at this and fell back into his seat, deep in thought. "I've seen this - I saw it a few times in the Water Tribe during the war," she breathed, and he glanced up at her - he didn't know much about the Water Tribe (nowadays, most people didn't), but he did know that she _never_ talked about it. "It was very... cutthroat," she said, swallowing hard around the lump that had formed in her throat, "and what noble class we had was... well, they destroyed each other for power. My father..." she started, but shook her head, unwilling to dredge up _that_ part of her past just yet. "This kind of thing happened a lot. The only thing worse than actually being murdered is being _hated_ - murder by publicity_._ If the people think you killed your father for power..."

"They'll never support me," he finished, and she nodded. He cursed under his breath. "How do I stop her?"

Katara looked away. "I... don't know."

He cursed again. She tried to come up with something helpful to say, or at least something clever, and then she noticed the blinking light on the cortex - someone was trying to contact her. For a moment, she considered ignoring the wave, but then whoever it was might go to Laila, and then she would have to explain why she wasn't accepting waves all of a sudden.

"Oh, no," she muttered, and Zuko looked up, his face oddly closed.

"Someone calling?" he asked, sounding a little bitter. She looked at the ID that was blinking on the panel - it was Zhao. Zhao was trying to contact her. What could he _possibly_ want? She'd already spoken to him once tonight, why was he calling on her again?

"It's - Zhao," she replied, hand hovering over the "accept" button.

"What's Zhao calling - oh," Zuko said uncomfortably, looking away. Katara bit her lip.

"He went to Laila," she said quietly. "I turned him down four times but he... didn't listen."

"Is that... legal?" Zuko asked, leaning against the wall beside the cortex, out of the screen's line of sight. Katara shrugged.

"It's not _il_legal. If Laila agrees to it, there's not much I can do," she said evenly, and for a moment, they stood in silence while she stared at the accept button like it owed her money.

"Zhao personally conquered the Water Tribe," Zuko whispered, and she swallowed hard.

"He did," she replied. Zuko nodded, and opened the window to leave.

"I'll take care of it," he said. "And - " he added, almost as an afterthought, "about Azula, don't... don't worry. I'll take care of that, too."

"Zuko - " she started, but he was gone.

* * *

><p>(at the fire nation palace in lu'wong)<p>

Azula was not in an especially good mood. First, her fool of an uncle had to go and disappear right when she was on the cusp of figuring out what he was studying so intently - something about a box that she'd heard rumor of but never seen - and Zhao was acting like a complete slimeball who owned her but she had to keep him on her side for the time being, and now... _this_.

"What are you plotting?" Zuko asked roughly, scowling at her. She sighed.

"Oh, Zuzu, sweetheart, don't you worry a thing about me," she lied, smiling brightly at him. "If I plot something, I'll be sure to let you in on it."

Never in a million years. It was only a matter of time, though, before he was out of her hair. Her pieces were moving into position on the board: Zhao was fully convinced that she was the rightful heir to the throne (if for no other reason than his delusion that she would marry him if he helped her), and all she had to do was set up all of the pawns to checkmate the king, which in this case was her father. Unfortunately, the _queen_ was Zuko, the ever-present thorn in her side.

Not for the first time, she wished that she were an only child. It would be harder to bring Zuko down than her father - any old assassin could stick a knife in an arrogant Fire Lord's back, but Zuko was more reserved, calculating, and - until his sudden disappearance a week ago - had an old master watching his back like a hawk.

With Uncle mysteriously gone, Zuko wouldn't be as difficult to displace, but it would still be a struggle. He wasn't as smart as her, but he was hardly an idiot, and he was well-liked by the people. If she wanted to take her throne, she'd have to slaughter him in _their_ eyes.

She'd gotten the idea from Zhao, blowing hot air about how easy the Water Tribe had fallen, how they'd fractured from within, hating their own leaders. If she killed Zuko, her people would hate her and rebel, and rebellions were _tiring_ things - easier, then, to kill the semi-beloved (or, at least, the soundly feared) Fire Lord Ozai and pin the blame on the revered crown prince.

And now he was suspicious. She wondered vaguely who she was going to have to kill for tipping him off.

"Stop lying, Azula," Zuko snapped, and she heaved a heavy sigh.

"All right, fine," she replied gently, walking over and placing a hand on his chest. He looked at her strangely. "I am plotting something. I want Father out of the way - he's getting too old for his job," she said, poison in her voice. "The border planets are talking about rebelling, and he seems to think that this is normal! How could he do that to the poor folk on the border?" she asked saccharinely. "They need the Alliance to take a _stand_. With Father out of the way, you and I will be able to quell the rebels and move on, to a prosperous future."

He peered at her for a moment, and then recoiled, disgust on his face. "You're lying. You'd never share the throne with me."

She cursed her misstep. "Why not?" she asked innocently. "You're my big brother!"

"And you're a power-hungry bitch. Who do you plan to pin Father's murder on? Zhao?" he asked mockingly, and Azula scowled.

It occurred to her in a horrible flash: he knew about her plan, but how? How could he possibly have - blue eyes and rich brown skin flitted into her mind. The Companion. The _chòu biaozi_ was Water Tribe! She'd put the pieces together, probably from Zuko's whining to her about how lonely and disaffected he was, and realized that Azula was taking a leaf out of her home planet's book.

Oh, this just _would not_ stand.

"And what are you going to do about it?" she challenged in a low voice, raising an eyebrow. "You've got no proof, no one loyal enough to you to stand against _me_."

"I'll go to Father," he snarled, already turning to go.

"Yes, and what will you tell him?" she asked, crossing her arms, already plotting. "That your _whore_ told you I'm a danger to him? Your _Independent_ whore? He'll be sure to take your word for it. Oh, and be sure to tell him," she called after his retreating form, "how you _failed_ again to produce lightning. Make him _proud _of you!"

With that, she turned on her heel and stalked into her room, grabbed a knife and slashed herself across the stomach - deep enough to leave a scar, but not enough to kill her, and screamed, as loud and as _terrified _as she could make it sound, before throwing the knife from her. She timed it perfectly - Zuko was first to reach her room, running back when he heard the scream, and when he caught sight of her bleeding, he picked up the knife.

"What did you - " he started, and then his eyes widened and he dropped the knife, cursing.

She bit back a smile and crumpled to the floor as the servants burst through the room. "Get him away from me!" she shrieked. "He just tried to kill me!"

"She's lying!" Zuko yelled, but the healers rushed forward. No one would believe that she would have slashed herself up _just_ to implicate Zuko.

"You have to stop him!" she cried, clutching the healers and fighting them violently. "He's going to kill Father! His Water Tribe whore put him up to it - stop him, you have to stop him!"

Zuko stared at her in horror.


	4. Chapter Three: Conspiracy

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter three: <strong>conspiracy<strong>

_"Who is more foolish? The fool, or the fool who follows him?"_  
>-Obi-Wan Kenobi, <em>A New Hope<em>

(at the eavesdown docks in the city of new omashu on persephone)

"So," Toph said jovially, fully aware that Jet was scowling - she didn't have to see him to know that. "We're takin' passengers?"

"Shut up," Jet snapped, and Bee snickered.

"It wasn't a bad plan," Bee said, "it's just not the right time. You know, neutral _jing_."

"Right," she mused, "neutral _jing_. And here I thought it was 'cause Jet underestimated the Persephone police for-mmph!" She struggled against Jet as he forcibly gagged her with an oily rag. Oh, _gross._

"Sir, that's disgusting," Bee said dryly, while Toph kicked violently against him. For the first time in her entire life, she wished for _shoes_ - like Bee's shoes, capped in steel and just _perfect _for kicking unruly captains _right_ in the junk.

"She asked for it," he replied. "C'mon, we've gotta talk to Badger. Toph, you're in charge of findin' us some passengers. Rich ones, if you can."

"Why should I help you?" she asked, tugging the rag from her face and spitting several times to clear the awful taste from her mouth. "You're a horrible, evil captain. I'm gonna go become a Companion," she yelled, while Bee and Jet walked away, ignoring her, "and join Mai and we'll mock you all the time and, ah, fuck it," she growled, and flopped to the floor of the open cargo bay, relaxing and stretching in the warm sunlight. That was one thing about the outer rim that she didn't like - the suns were too far away, you didn't get good, warm summers like you did on the Core.

Toph's secret - she was from the Core. Ariel, in fact, was the bustling hub that had once called itself her home. She didn't often miss it, but she did have a few good memories of Core summers, running through the zoo to get to the "extinct in the wild" section, where they housed the badgermoles.

More than a real summer, what she missed most from her childhood was the badgermoles. Most people didn't like them because they thought they were ugly, and the zoo people had _hated_ them, since they had a way of getting out of any pen that the zookeepers put them in, but Toph liked their tenacity and if they were ugly, then what did she care? Besides, the badgermoles _got it_, the way no one else - particularly her family - did: sight was just icing on the cake, wrapping on the present. What really mattered was _touch_.

With touch, she knew everything - she could discern every footstep on the street for about a half-mile radius, and even a little bit about each person. This guy was running, his heart was pounding and she could feel the breath rattling in his lungs and the bullet in his stomach: he was fleeing from the law, which was on his tail, beating feet and rhythmic hearts all doing their jobs (although one of them was nervous, heart fluttering a little faster than the others around him). On the other side of the docks, a few people were running to put out a fire, but only a few; either the fire wasn't that bad or it was in some criminal's ship. Another man was walking at a leisurely pace, enjoying the world around him, but he was sweating profusely and held something stolen in his jacket, so he avoided the lawmen chasing the other guy down the way. That girl was in love with that boy, or at least her heart was pounding in her chest like she was, and this boy was hoping that she might notice him.

(Badgermoles, she knew, were fuzzy, and loved moon peaches, and their noses were extra-sensitive the way her feet were extra-sensitive, and they could burrow like nothing else, and they always smelled like cinnamon and dirt, and no one understood them, always prodding at them and demanding the wrong things from them, but she knew they were _amazing_.)

She could people-watch with a single toe on the ground, and she liked it, most of the time. It meant that no one could lie to her, but it also meant that she knew everyone's secrets. People were weird like that, they thought that since they couldn't see her eyes and she couldn't see them that she was automatically trustworthy. The only person who didn't trust her was Jet, and that was why she trusted him.

He knew better, that was the thing: he knew she was a liar and a thief, and so he expected that from her. She found that lack of trust refreshing, so she played his game, and, well, he paid her handsomely and she liked the work (usually) and _Freedom_ lived up to her name most days.

Toph had gone off in search of her own destiny a long time ago, skipped out of Ariel in the dead of the night, and here she had found it, working as a mechanic on a Firefly. It wasn't what her parents might have considered a good life, but she was happy, so she called it a win. And now, new people were going to be invading her home, so she had to field them, make sure they weren't going to hurt her.

That was why Jet always put her on public relations: if someone was going to hurt _Freedom_, Toph would know.

An old man walked through the marketplace, hovering over the open hulls and ignoring the hawkers - paying attention, she figured, to the make of the ships. His heartbeat was slow and steady but his personal effects were large and unwieldy; Jet wouldn't be pleased with that big thing taking up space in the cargo bay. She'd have to hear his voice to be sure if he was trustworthy or not.

"You're gonna come with us," she called, as he started to peer at the hull of _Freedom_.

"Oh?" he asked. His voice was rich, thick with a Core accent, but friendly. She liked it.

"Yup," she said, grinning. "You're looking at the ships, not the destinations. Everyone knows Fireflies run smoothest, and mine's the best Firefly in the 'Verse."

"Is that so?" the man said, and she felt him cross his arms. "She doesn't look very impressive."

"What's the look matter?" she challenged, and the man finally turned to her and saw her visor - her blindness. She wore it for that very reason, so that people would know when they looked at her that she was different. Toph didn't _want_ to blend in, and she sure as hell didn't want to look like everyone else. No, she wanted those people with sight to _know_ that she got by just fine without it. "She's got it where it counts."

"I'm sure," the man replied. "I meant no offense to the lady."

"I ain't a lady, but I get what you mean. So, what d'you say, Grandpa?"

"I have no children," the man replied, and she felt him hold out his hand, so she took it before he could guide her towards it, and shook it vigorously. Her fingers clasping his hand, she felt his heartbeat speed up a bit, the faint rattling of his breathing like the sound of a crackling fire - he'd been sick lately, or maybe it was just his age - the heat of his skin like he had a fever, the rough hew of his hands. He was an old man filled with stories, that she could tell, and he was in bad health, but not so bad that he couldn't travel, and he was telling the truth about children, but the timbre of his voice said that there was more than what he was saying. She was all right with that, though - there always was.

"I'm Toph," she said. "You do have payment, right?" she added, as an afterthought.

"I don't have much in the way of money," he replied, "but I do have..." he took something from one of his carts and handed it to her. It was a wooden box, and inside were -

"Moon peaches!" she sighed. "I haven't had these since - " she caught herself before she gave away too much. "You got real fruits and vegetables?"

"I do," he answered, not seeming to notice her near slip-up. "I had a garden, back at home."

"Well, I usually don't speak for the Captain," she lied, "but _I_ say this is more than enough for passage to wherever you want to go, Grandpa."

"I seem to remember telling you that I am not a grandfather," he said lightly, while she helped him drag his giant box onto the ship. She tapped it a few times to see what was in it, but all she felt was solid blankness. Apparently, he was carrying a solid metal box around with him.

Weird.

"It's a nickname," she replied, "since you didn't give me a real one."

"Ah! I apologize," he said, and bowed - a high formal bow, she recognized. "My name is Iroh."

"Sweet. Welcome aboard the _Freedom_, Grandpa," she said, grinning.

* * *

><p>Mai scowled at the door the moment her client had gone. She hated it when people tried to tie her down like he had, and even more when they acted like she was wrong to turn them down. She had been kind about it, and she hadn't said anything cruel, and he just - ugh!<p>

"Asshole," she whispered, and then groaned. Jet was rubbing off on her. When she'd first joined _Freedom_, she never cursed - she had always considered it beneath her, something that the masses did, and that she should keep impeccable manners when speaking, even to herself.

She bit back another curse, this time at herself for cursing in the first place.

"_Freedom_, this is Mai," she said into the communicator, and Longshot replied.

"Ambassador," he replied, voice gravelly from disuse, "you're early."

"I know, my second engagement was postponed," she said, flying the little shuttle over the city. It wasn't Sihnon, but Persephone had a charm all of its own that she couldn't deny. It would have been better, though, if she could ever see more than just the docks. "Have Jet and Bee returned from Badger's yet?"

"No," Longshot said, "but they shouldn't be much longer. You probably want to hurry."

"Right," she replied. "I'll be docking in fifteen."

"Roger."

Of all the people on _Freedom_, Mai had to admit that she got along best with Longshot. He, at least, understood the wisdom of being conservative with speech. Jet liked to whine about how neither of them ever talked, but Mai thought he wasn't being fair - both she and Longshot talked _enough_ for their situations. More than that, Longshot didn't treat her like a lesser human being because she was a Companion, and he didn't spend all his time leering at her like the Duke, and he wasn't as abrasive as Toph.

Mai _liked_ Longshot.

If Bee hadn't gotten to him first, she might have seduced the man, just for the sheer joy of _not_ having to come up with pillow talk for once in her life.

The whole shuttle shuddered as she docked it and turned off the control panel, and she made a mental note to talk to Toph about that rattling sound, since it worried her and the very last thing she wanted was for her shuttle to be out of commission for, well, any length of time, considering that that would mean being stuck in the main ship with Jet.

She was changing clothes when she noticed the flashing light on the cortex - someone had left her a message. It turned out to be simple, text-only: _Trouble in the capital. Stay gone. -K_.

That, Mai thought, did not bode well.

* * *

><p>(at the companion house)<p>

Usually, Suki liked the fact that she didn't live at the Companion House - it saved her from most of Ty Lee's drama and kept the snide glaring she got on a daily basis to a manageable amount - but there were times that she wished she did have a room, even if it meant sleeping in the servant's quarters with Ty Lee and Song.

"What happened?" she asked, but the crowd swarming around Laila refused to give. "Hey, I work here!" she yelled, and got only glares in response.

"Ladies and Gentlemen," Laila said, in that "simpering" voice she saved for really desperate occasions, "the investigation will not hinder the lives of any of the Companions unconnected to the conspiracy, which is all of them, if you ask me," she added, laughing falsely, and Suki saw the sheer terror behind the woman's usually impeccable facade. Also, conspiracy? "We will be open for regular business as soon as the officials deem it, and we will support our girls so long as they prove themselves worthy of that support. Thank you."

As the crowd began to yell - Suki realized belatedly that she was in the middle of a swarm of _press_ - Laila bowed formally and swept into the House without another word. What the _hell_ was going on?

She forced her way through the teeming crowd of people and practically threw herself at the door, where a panicked Ty Lee stood, rocking on her heels. "Suki," Ty Lee hissed, and grabbed her arm. "Why weren't you here earlier?"

"I tried," she gasped, "but there are so many _people..._ What happened?"

"Katara's been arrested," she said fervently, and Suki froze in the open door that Ty Lee held for her.

"What?" she asked, mind reeling. Did this have something to do with Zhao? Or perhaps with - but no, no one knew about that but her, right? "What do you mean, arrested? Why?"

"You have to come in," Ty Lee said, biting her lip. "We can't talk to the press, Laila had a fit when Liu Xi told them that Katara was supposed to meet with Zhao later in the week."

Suki almost didn't recognize her desk when she walked up to it. There was a contingent of men in Alliance uniforms poring over everything she had there, scrolling through her computer and tinkering with her cortex. "You," one of them said, pointing at her. "What do you do here?"

"I'm the secretary whose desk you're molesting," she replied without thinking, and one of the officers abruptly started coughing. The one who had called her out didn't seem to have the same sense of humor, though, and scowled, motioning her over to the desk. She twitched; he was _sitting_ on _her_ desk, the one that she spent _hours_ cleaning every night because Laila insisted that it be spotless and now she would have _Alliance_ all over it.

"The Madam tells us that you're friends with this Katara woman?" the man asked.

"_Lady_ Katara," she answered pointedly, "and I do speak on occasion, yes."

The purple-belly's scowl intensified. "The _lady_," he said, with ironic emphasis, "is under investigation for conspiracy to commit treason, and until we clear your name, so are you, miss...?"

"Suki," she replied, "Rei Suki. Treason?" she asked, trying to wrap her head around that. How was _Katara_ under investigation for treason?

"Yes, Miss Rei," the purple-belly snapped, "treason. I suggest you take this seriously, because I can _assure _you that we are."

She glanced at Ty Lee, who was chewing on her lip and pale as death, and bit back the urge to snatch a gun, scream _for independence! _and start shooting, if for no other reason than to break up the _horribly_ awkward atmosphere. She gave Ty Lee a tremulous smile and looked back to the purple-belly. "What do you want to know?"

"What is the nature of your relationship with the accused?" the man asked, and she swallowed a snarky response - she couldn't help it, the Alliance had a way of bringing out her nasty side - and shrugged.

"We were friends," she replied, "sort of. When she didn't have a client or any classes to teach, she'd talk to me."

"About what?"

Suki gaped. "I don't... I don't know, whatever came to mind. Nothing about... treason."

"Did she mention her meeting with the prince to you at any time?"

"Uh, we talked about it when the request came in," she replied, mind made up to protect Katara as far as she needed to. Katara would have done the same for her, she was sure of it. "I put her name on the list, but other than that..."

"Did she, at any time, express any alliance with the Independent factions?"

"No," Suki said firmly, "we don't talk about the war here."

"Oh?" the purple-belly asked, one eyebrow raised. "Why is that?"

"Companions are..." she started, trying desperately to remember what Katara had said about that the one time she had brought up the war, "an escape from the reality of... reality," she said, and winced. "I'm not one, but since I work with them, I have to keep the same... well, I can't talk about the same things they can't talk about."

"Such as?"

"Politics, religion, and music," she replied quickly. "The big three," she added, and smiled. In response, she got a glare.

"Right," the man said. "I'll need your contact information." He handed her a datapad, and she penned in her information - falsely, because the very last thing she needed was the Alliance figuring out who she was or where she had come from - while her mind raced about how to help Katara. Obviously, something big was going on up at the capital, so the prince was well out... there _was_ another option.

"Sorry about him," one of the officers said, and she realized it was the one who had laughed at her joke earlier. He was kind of cute, and he had a nice smile - she caught herself. He was _Alliance_, and that was an automatic _no_. "He takes this really seriously. I'm Wade," he said, holding out a hand.

"Hi," she replied shortly.

"Xiang!" the head officer barked, and Wade winced.

"Sorry," he whispered, and then mouthed _later?_ to her. She shrugged, and managed to make it look coy rather than repulsed, and walked back to where Ty Lee was about to explode.

"Okay, what happened?" she asked, and Ty Lee shook her head.

"I don't know," she whispered quickly. "Last night, I went over with Jin and we talked for a while but then someone came to her window and Jin made me leave without even figuring out who it was, and I was going to go back and grill her about it but then I fell asleep and around one we all got dragged out of bed and the Fire Lord was _here_ and he ordered everyone up and started interrogating people - they took Jin _in_ earlier! - and they arrested Katara, but I don't think even _she_ knew what was happening!"

Suki tried to process that - someone had come to Katara's window: that had to be the prince. After showing up, either he had gotten really ticked off at her and had her arrested out of spite (she wouldn't put it past him, but she wasn't sure he was the sort) or he had been involved in some kind of treason and she had gotten roped into it by association (she doubted it) or the Fire Lord had figured out that the prince was seeing a Companion and had for some reason thought this was worthy of lashing out (possible, but unlikely) or she was missing something (undoubtedly). Whatever had happened, Katara was in trouble, and, if Laila's comments to the press were anything to go by, then she was on her own.

She _had_ to help her friend. "Ty Lee," she whispered, "we have to help her."

"How?" Ty Lee asked, tears in her eyes, "The government is all over this and Laila's _seriously_ cracking down. We can't do anything."

"Maybe _we_ can't, but what if there was a Companion who wasn't under Laila's thumb?"

Ty Lee blinked. "What are you saying?" she breathed, and Suki nodded sharply, mind made up.

"I'm saying we need to talk to Mai."


	5. Chapter Four: Living Fossils

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter four: <strong>living fossils<strong>

_"Balls of yarn. All tangled up and knotted with different weights and colors, but you pull one string and you pull them all."_  
>-River Tam, <em>Serenity<em> comic

(on _freedom_)

"And if you need to go to the cargo bay for any reason, find one of us," Jet said, indicating to himself and Bee, "and we will escort you. Outside of mealtimes, I'm going to have to ask you to stay in the passenger dorms. For your own safety," he added, and thought he heard Toph snicker. Their passengers - a paltry three, he would have to talk to Toph about the definition of a hawker - nodded vaguely, but one of them, a weedy man, raised his hand.

"I have important supplies in the cargo bay, could someone escort me there?" he asked, in his nasally voice. A muscle in Jet's cheek twitched, and he nodded at Bee.

"Bee will show you the way, Mister...?"

"Yu," he replied, "and it's _Master_ Yu."

Master of what? Jet wanted to ask, but didn't. He could still hear Bee's latest admonishment about _not being a dick to people who are paying you_ ringing in his ears. "Toph, go with them," he said, just to watch the mechanic squirm. It was a fitting punishment, he figured.

The three passengers left with Bee, and Jet was just about to go harass Longshot when he walked straight into Mai. She was, he noted, paler than usual. "I need to ask a favor," she said in a low voice. Jet raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, really?"

"Yes," she said, nodding. "There will be payment."

"Well, you know me," he replied loftily, pouring himself a glass of beer, "as long as the price is right, I'm good. What's the favor you need doing?"

"I need you to break into an Alliance prison on Sihnon and rescue a prisoner."

Jet choked on his drink. "Are you _high?_"he asked, spluttering, and Mai didn't even blink.

"I know how it sounds," she started, and he cut her off with a laugh.

"I'm not sure you do. You want me to risk my neck for some purple-belly scum on a Core planet, just 'cause you asked me to? No, thanks." Silver glinted at Mai's hand, and he saw that she was clutching a knife between her fingers - that made this one of the few times he'd ever seen her wield her chosen weapons, and the last time had involved Reavers. If she was willing to fight for this, it was a _big_ deal. "Why?" he asked seriously, pouring his drink back into the bottle and taking out the whiskey - if he was going to take her seriously about this job, he was going to need a stiffer drink.

"She's an old friend," Mai replied succinctly, "and she's an Independent, if that matters to you."

He watched her carefully. "This ain't your not-Water-Tribe friend, is it?"

"Katara," Mai corrected sharply, "and yes, it is."

"How much pay are we talking?"

"How much do you want?"

He raised an eyebrow. "If you're _that_ serious, then I'm in. I'll name the price after we've sprung her. Which prison?"

"Fèi Téng Shi."

Once again, he choked on his drink. "It's not even possible," he said, "Fèi Téng Shi is the worst prison in the Core. You _don't_ get out of there."

"Says the Alliance," she replied, and he scowled. It was disgusting, really, how well she knew him - of course, if the Alliance said it couldn't be done, Jet would do it, just to prove them wrong. Hell, that he'd do for free, not that he'd tell Mai as much. He knew she was filthy rich, even beyond her Companion account, and if he could milk that for what it was worth... he was about to become a wealthy man, _and_ kick dirt in the Alliance's collective face.

"Fine. We'll spring your girl from prison."

* * *

><p>(at the fire nation palace)<p>

Zuko scowled at the door for what felt like the fiftieth time. He wasn't in prison, which was good, but he _was_ being guarded round-the-clock by his father's men, since his fate hadn't been decided yet, and until Azula testified in front of Parliament, he wasn't _technically_ considered guilty.

He cursed himself again for picking up the stupid knife.

"Stop," he said, out loud, to himself. Going over (and over, and over) all the things he should have done wouldn't help him - and it definitely wouldn't help Katara. What would Uncle tell him to do? Find a way to warn Katara about Azula and the conspiracy that they were supposedly involved in, find a way to convince the Parliament of his innocence, find a way to save the universe from Azula.

He took a deep breath. He was supposed to meet with his father in the evening; there, he could explain what had happened. If there was a shred of fairness in the entire universe, Father would at _least_ recognize that Zuko's story needed to be checked out. He didn't have high hopes, though. His father...

(Sometimes, it still pissed him off - he had been a _child_, barely fourteen and hotheaded and filled with self-righteousness, and maybe he shouldn't have said anything to the Parliament, maybe he should have stayed obedient and quiet, but one outburst against Father's regime...)

He shook off the memories and refused to touch the scar; that was a demon already laid to rest, thanks mostly to his Uncle's guidance. "Don't listen to him," Uncle had always said, "don't let him define you."

And he hadn't. It had been eleven years, and he'd worked _hard_ to be something that his father couldn't control, to be _more_ than a burn scar and a years-old mistake, but now Azula was threatening to take it all away. _Someone_ had to limit the Fire Lord's power, and Azula certainly wouldn't - if anything, she would take over or do away with the Parliament, and then the Alliance as a whole would be doomed. He had to appeal to them, convince them that Azula was _not_ the answer, find a way to make them understand that their darling Princess would be their downfall.

But first, he had to get out of this mess. If he could only figure out _how._

First, Katara had to be warned. It wasn't the smartest course of action, sneaking out and warning her, but his heart wouldn't let him _not_. It was his fault she was caught up in this, and if he could get her out, then he could go on to do the rest with a clear conscience - and Zuko valued his conscience. It was, Uncle had once told him, what separated him from Azula, what made him more like his mother than his father.

The palace was criss-crossed with secret passages, leading in every direction out from the throne room like a spider's web, and he knew that even the guards didn't know where most of them were. He could get into the passages, take one out into the city, make it to Katara, warn her, then get back before his meeting with Father. It wasn't a great plan, but it was a plan, and that was better than stewing in self-loathing for another few hours.

He opened the passage leading out of his quarters and made for the city.

* * *

><p>(on <em>freedom<em>)

"You are a dumbass," Toph snapped, but Jet merely shrugged.

"I'm not. We can do this."

"Sir," Bee said fervently, "I don't know. Fèi Téng Shi is _not_ some county prison."

"I am not doing this!" Toph shouted. "I'm not dying for Mai's secret Companion lover - no offense," she added, waving at Mai's general direction. "But my ass stays on this ship, _dong le ma?_"

"You stay on the ship, you don't get paid," Jet replied, and Toph shrugged.

"Screw the money, it's worthless if I'm dead or in the Alliance's hands anyway."

"Fine, you're in charge of the home team," he said, and continued while Toph spluttered furiously. "Longshot, we'll need you at the helm, we'll have to make a speedy getaway. Bee, you, Pipsqueak, and the Duke will be with me on the actual mission."

"What if we say no?" the Duke asked, raising an eyebrow, but Pipsqueak smacked him on the back of the head.

"We're in, Mai," he assured her. "Who will be running interference so the Alliance doesn't swarm us?"

"Toph," Jet started, but Toph snorted.

"Give me one reason," she countered, holding up a finger.

"Here," Mai said, taking out a datapad and handing it over. Toph tapped it a few times, and considered chewing on it, just for the hell of it, because seriously, how could Mai have _forgotten_ that she was _blind?_ It wasn't like she wore a visor over her eyes or anything.

"Wow, this has _so much_ information. I can't _believe_ how incredibly informative this - hey!"

"It's a diagram of the prison," the Duke said, snatching it from Toph's hands and peering at it. "It's got all the info about the locks and the security detail. Where'd you get this, Mai?"

"That isn't important," she replied. "Toph, I'll help you sabotage the system."

"That's not a reason to do it," Toph trilled, arms crossed.

"How's this?" Pipsqueak offered, glancing at it, "It's a Sirius-46."

Toph perked up at that - Sirius was known throughout the 'Verse as hosting the best of the best mechanical minds, and they boasted that their systems were unbeatable. A chance to show up those arrogant sons-of-bitches? "All right, you got me. I'll do it."

"You're the best, Tophlet," Jet said, and Toph scowled.

"Don't call me - " she started, but Jet waved her off, and she kicked out under the table. The Duke yelped.

"What the hell, Toph?" he shouted, and she winced.

"I was aiming for Jet," she said, a little sheepishly.

"You _missed!_"

"And the award for Most Observant goes to..." Jet said, sweeping his arms out theatrically and then pointing at the Duke, "the Duke! A round of applause for our youngest crewmember, everyone!"

The Duke scowled, but Pipsqueak, Bee, and Longshot all applauded. Mai bured her face in her hands. "Back to the task at hand," she said tensely. "How do you plan to break into the prison?"

"With Tophlet and the Ambassador sabotaging the system, it won't be hard at all for the four of us to get in," Jet replied, shrugging. "We just need some uniforms - Pipsqueak, you got that one - and our expert forger - Bee - drafts us up some transfer papers, and we can walk your secret Companion lover right out of the Alliance's paws. Easy."

"There's nothing _easy_ about breaking a government prisoner out of Fèi Téng Shi," Bee said, already doodling the first drafts of the transfer papers on a notepad. "We'll need a contingency plan, in case something goes wrong."

"Oh, come on, what - " Jet started, and Bee held up a hand.

"With all due respect, sir, if you say "what could possibly go wrong?" I am going to punch you in the face."

Jet opened and closed his mouth several times before he settled on a scowl. "Fine, what's this plan?"

"Let me guess," Toph said, leaning back and propping her feet up on the table (Longshot and Mai both twitched), "it involves Toph and Longshot swooping in to save the day."

"Actually, my thinking was more along the lines of 'run like hell'," Bee mused, "but I like the sound of that. Go on, how will you save the damsel in distress?"

Longshot raised an eyebrow, but Toph snorted. "Right, like Bee's ever gonna be a damsel in distress," she muttered, and Bee smirked.

"I was talking about the Captain, but if you'd like, I can grow my hair long and faint dramatically."

"I can bring the ship around to this courtyard," Longshot said quietly, pointing at it on the diagram, "but we don't have any guns, and Alliance men'll know that Fireflies aren't armed, so I can't bluff them."

"Leave the firepower to me," Toph boasted, pointing at her chest. "I've got a few babies that have been _aching_ to see some combat experience - " ("That is _terrifying_," Bee muttered) " - and even though some of 'em are way too much for one person to handle, they're big and Pipsqueak tells me they look like demons caked in metal, so they'll scare up those purple-bellies, no trouble."

"I can vouch," Pipsqueak said. "She has a _plasma-powered gatling gun_."

Toph grinned.

* * *

><p>(in the fèi téng shi prison in the fire nation capital of lu'wong)<p>

Katara sighed. She'd been meditating for the better part of a full day, and she was frankly sick to the death of it - she'd gone through every single chant that she knew, and then she'd made up a few of her own, and then she'd resorted to humming, just to pass the time. No one had come to interrogate her, and, save for the one time that someone brought food by, she hadn't seen another person since she'd been dragged out of the Companion House. It was eerie, really, since she would have thought that the government would at least want to grill her for information.

Maybe Zuko had... No, it was best not to think about him. If he was very, very lucky, then he might still be alive and staring at the same kind of prison bars she was - the Fire Lord was not known for his mercy or compassion, even toward his children. And Katara had heard enough stories about him from Zuko to guess at the trouble he - and by extension, she - was in.

She wasn't that afraid for herself, though. She had the benefit of actually being innocent, although what that counted for she wasn't certain, and besides, she knew she'd been living on borrowed time since long before the war ended.

Katara's past held many secrets, but the most damning one was the reason her people had been targeted even before the war: holdovers from ancient times, "living fossils," they were called, people who still possessed the power to manipulate the elements. The art of bending was forgotten, but the gift itself wasn't _quite_ gone, not yet, no matter how violently the Alliance tried to pretend it was.

She had discovered when she was very young that she had an affinity for water, but when the war came and Zhao struck down her people, she hid it deep within herself - and then she fled. Her mother was the only person who had known her secret, and her mother had _died_ to keep that secret, and she couldn't let anyone else suffer because she was - _unnatural._

Her mother had given her a second chance, but Katara knew all along it was just a matter of time before fate caught up with her.

She just hoped that no one else had to die - that Zuko got away clean, that Jin and Ty Lee were allowed to go free, that Suki wouldn't be arrested.

_Om mani padme hum_, she thought, and focused on the blood in her veins. If she concentrated, she could follow it - and maybe move it, if she tried, but the mere thought of doing so to herself was frightening - still, it was better than her thoughts at the moment. Immersed in the water inside her body, she didn't hear the bell sounding that a door was opening, so the sound of a gate clanging open startled her and it felt like a knife shot through her hand.

She gasped - she'd _cut_ herself with bending. She hadn't even known that was _possible_.

"_G__āi s__i!_"she hissed, and hastily began trying to staunch the bleeding in her shirt. A second bell sounded, and she looked to the little peephole as though an answer might show up - what was happening out there? "No, no, no," she muttered - the bleeding just wouldn't stop, and a second gate opened, and it was closer this time, and she was panicking, and - in desperation, she _pulled_ on the blood and _pushed_ against the wound and then -

Her hand glowed a little, and the wound was gone.

Blood was still splattered over her hands and shirt, but the skin was clear and unmarked. She stared at her hands in horror, and then her door opened.

She threw up her hands and almost bent the intruders away, but she caught herself at the last moment. Standing in her doorway was a vaguely familiar man flanked by three others, and he was smirking like he was on top of the world.

"Send a wave to the Ambassador," the man said. "We've got her."

* * *

><p>(on <em>freedom<em>)

"So, explain this to me, Grandpa," Toph said, legs tapping against the metal of the cargo bay. "Your box. Why?"

"Ah, Lady Toph, I am afraid that I cannot divulge _all _of my secrets," Iroh replied, carving a piece of a moon peach and handing it to her. "The box is important, and it is imperative that I transport it to the Outer Rim with haste."

"So why'd you jump on with us?" she asked around a mouthful of peach. "I mean, there were other ships headed out that way, but you didn't even look. If it's so important, why not find something heading out that way for sure?"

He didn't reply for a moment, and she thought he was probably making a face. The one thing she regretted was not being able to see faces. "Lady Toph, you are awfully inquisitive this evening."

"What can I say?" she sighed, leaning against her _baby_, the Maria Mark Three, named for her favorite badgermole (not that anyone knew, or even asked), which packed enough firepower to disrupt fusion in the White Sun if she so wished it. It hadn't started off with that much firepower - it was originally a relic from Earth That Was, an unused Gatling gun that she had relieved of its museum-watching duty - but she'd tinkered with it so much that it was officially classified as a weapon of mass destruction, and merely owning it qualified her for the death penalty on several planets. It was her pride and joy. "Moon peaches make me talkative."

"Well, the box contains... delicate materials," Iroh said evenly, and handed her another wedge of moon peach, "and I needed to be certain that it would reach its destination safely, even moreso than the haste this mission requires. Will the Captain be much longer on this planet?"

Toph shrugged. Iroh - and their two other passengers, but they had been locked up in the passenger dorms since they'd left atmo on Persephone, complaining of illness - was under the impression that they were merely picking up a friend of Mai's from the Companion House. Hopefully, they would get out of this without anyone finding out the truth, but Toph didn't have high hopes for the Captain's plan.

Really, she didn't have high hopes for _any_ of the Captain's plans, ever. Usually, she and Longshot were stuck cleaning up whatever royal mess he had gotten himself into while Bee tried to ensure that he returned to them in one piece. She made a mental note to look into hiring a medic for the ship - right now, the closest thing they had to a real surgeon was Mai, and she only knew how to tear people up, not put them back together. Most of the time, if there was any removal of bullets required, they had to patch up the patient (Jet) and make their way to the nearest hospital that _wasn't_ Alliance-run, which meant that the Mission on Haven was their absolute best friend. The Mission boasted at least three real doctors, seven midwives, and real, actual, proper medical equipment. Not to mention the purely _epic_ weaponry they had on-hand, since Haven was right on the edge of Reaver space.

It took massive balls to run that establishment. As far as Toph was concerned, the Shepherd could _stay_ there.

"He's picked her up," Mai said from behind them, walking out of her shuttle. Anyone else would have thought she was the picture of serenity, but Toph saw things differently: Mai's heart was _pounding_ and her hands were shaking and she was armed. Mai was _scared_ and nervous, and that made Toph a little uneasy, since usually Mai was a rock.

"Well, then we should be outta here posthaste - what is it?" she called out, as the intercom on the opposite side of the cargo bay crackled. There was a pause, and then Longshot's voice echoed through the ship.

"Toph, I need you up here."

Well, that was odd. She shrugged and stood up, licking the moon peach-juice off her fingers while she did (and poking the box one last time, for good measure, but it stayed stubbornly blank to her). "Ambassador, make sure he doesn't do anything illegal, kay?"

"I make no promises," Iroh said, a laugh in his voice.

She bounced away, still sucking on her fingers (moon peaches were _juicy_ and _delicious_ and she didn't want to waste _any_ of them), and bounded onto the bridge jovially. "What's up, pilot-man?"

"We have an Alliance plant on-board," Longshot said, and Toph froze.


	6. Chapter Five: Inside

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter five: <strong>inside<strong>

_"To the newest member of our crew: May all her desires be fulfilled, except for one - so she'll always have something to strive for."_  
>-Seven of Nine, <em>Star Trek: Voyager<em>

(at the companion house)

Suki was _fidgeting_. Mai had given a short response to her (and Ty Lee's) desperate plea, merely saying that she would handle the situation, and Suki had _no_ idea what that meant. Was she going to destroy the government? Break Katara out of jail? Show up to court with some super-secret trump card that threw out the whole case? Assassinate the Fire Lord? The _not knowing_ was driving her insane.

To make matters worse, Ty Lee was waiting for her in Katara's technically-off-limits room, where Mai would contact them when the "situation was dealt with" (whatever the _hell_ she meant by that) and where they would then flee from. There was no way that the government would let them slip through their slimy fingers, especially if they discovered that someone had sent and received waves from Katara's room (which they would) and traced them back to Suki (which they also would). Mai was lucky - her cortex supposedly had some sort of cloaking device, since her captain was apparently a paranoid weirdo, so the waves wouldn't trace back to her or her ship.

Mai would get out of this scot-free, but she and Ty Lee were in it _deep_, and they'd have to disappear before any news broke.

She didn't regret her decision, but she did wish it wasn't so _irrevocable._ She was comfortable with her job, most of the time, and she didn't fancy the thought of moving out to the border planets to hide from the Alliance, especially not with Ty Lee, who had refused outright to split with her.

Still, she'd do it, because Katara was worth it - for once in the girl's life, she deserved to have _someone_ come through for _her_.

Ten minutes, she thought, glancing at the clock, Mai had said she'd have an answer at 1945 _sharp_, and Mai was never, ever late for anything. Ten more minutes, and she'd know. Ten more minutes and - a man walked in the doors.

"Hi," he said, "I'm looking for someone, I was told she worked here?"

Suki gaped.

"Uh, hello?"

"Who... are you?" she asked faintly, staring openly at the man. He looked _exactly_ like Katara - too much alike for any coincidence. They had the exact same blue eyes, the same shade of brown hair (although his was shaggy around his cheekbones), the same skin tone, the same facial structure - they _had_ to be related. And he, of course, had to be coming here _now._

"I'm Sokka," he explained, holding out a hand to shake, which she ignored. "I'm looking for my sister, her name is Katara. She looks a lot like me, but she's shorter and where are we going what are you doing stop please oh _God_ - "

"Hush!" Suki snapped, and continued to drag the man through the halls until she reached Katara's room. "In here!"

"Okay, look," he said, holding his hands up in supplication, "I don't know who you are and I really don't want to anymore, just please let me go and - "

"Holy crap," Ty Lee said, and Sokka let out an unmanly shriek, at approximately the same moment that Suki realized that Ty Lee hadn't been alone in the room - sitting on the bed, looking bemused and faintly pissed off, was Prince Zuko. "You look _just like_ Katara!"

Several emotions flashed over Sokka's face at once, relief to excitement to a strange sort of _hunger_, and then he blinked hard. "You know my sister?"

"Yes," Suki said, cutting in before Ty Lee could say anything. "We do, that's why I brought you here."

"Oh?" he replied, an eyebrow raised (her heartbeat sped up a bit; who knew that Katara's genes would look so good on a man?) "and you didn't think to say something before dragging me here against my will? Thanks." He looked around the room in confusion. "Where is she? I've been looking for her for, uh, a while now, so if you could just show me the way to - "

"She's in prison," Zuko said, voice cold, and then glanced at Suki. "I said I'd take care of it, you didn't have to call in - "

"Wait, prison - " Sokka started.

"Oh, shut up - " Ty Lee shouted, red in the face.

"Hey!" Suki yelled, "All of you! _Not the time for arguing!_" She pointed at Zuko, who raised an eyebrow, clearly unused to being spoken to like this, "You! This mess is _your fault_, so forgive me for not waiting for the prince to _swoop in_ and rescue my _friend_ from Fèi Téng Shi. And you," she continued, pointing at Sokka, who flinched, "I will _explain to you_ what is happening, if you will just bear with me _for a minute!_ And Ty Lee, if you don't shut up, I'm going to _hit you._"

Her miniature tirade finished, she took several deep breaths and waited for the inevitable backlash - luckily, Sokka stepped in before Zuko or Ty Lee could tear into her (or, in Ty Lee's case, burst into tears). "All right. You said you'd explain, explain."

* * *

><p>(at the prison)<p>

"Do I know you?" Katara asked, and the man smirked, then pulled out a cigarette and lit it (she noticed that the woman on his right rolled her eyes).

"Don't tell me you forgot me, sweetheart. I'm hurt," he muttered around the cigarette, and then he motioned with his gun to the woman. "Bee, let's get outta here before they look too close at those papers."

"You're Jet!" she realized suddenly, and he grinned. That meant - that meant that _Mai_ had something to do with this. But she had told Mai to stay out of the way, so who had told her that she was in trouble? And why had Mai seen fit to send in her crazy captain and his crew to come rescue her? More to the point, _how_ had she convinced her crazy captain to rescue her?

"The one and only," he said, grinning cheekily, and she blinked.

"Right," she replied, and the woman - Bee, he had called her - snorted.

"We're running low on time. Longshot, you there?" she said into her wrist. A crackly voice answered in the affirmative. "We're on our way out. Let the Ambassador know."

"So, what'd you do?" Jet asked, sauntering through the prison like he owned it.

"Conspiracy, supposedly," she answered, and looked around. "How did you get in here?"

He shrugged. "Transfer papers. Oh, that reminds me," he said, taking a drag on his cigarette and then stamping it out (Bee scowled and picked it up behind him before glaring and shoving it in his back pocket). He rolled his eyes at his comrade and then pulled out a pair of handcuffs and winked. "Gotta look the part, sweetheart," he said, grinning, and cuffed her hands together. "Now, as our prisoner, you'll have to - "

"Sir, please shut up," Bee said, and the others flanking him snickered. She glanced at them - one was a veritable giant, but he looked friendly, while the other was a wiry teenager who seemed to have a leer permanently etched onto his face. Pipsqueak and the Duke, if she remembered correctly from her discussions with Mai. The oldest and the youngest members of the crew, respectively, deadly with explosives and expert shots, mercenaries hired by Jet to do any of the dirty business that required more than two gun-hands. Dangerous, but easy to get along with. Right.

And that left Bee, the sarcastic second-in-command, married to the pilot and the closest thing that Mai had to a friend on the ship. She decided to stick to Bee rather than Jet. She seemed less likely to try anything funny.

"Anyway," Jet continued, ignoring the snickers, "we're taking you off-planet. Officially, see."

"Why would the government want me off-planet?" she asked, struggling to keep up with Jet's pace. "Wouldn't it make more sense for me to stay here?"

It was Bee who answered, "That's the beauty of it," she said, smiling. "We played like it seemed weird to us, too, but we're just the lackeys. They let us in, and while they're busy trying to contact the higher-up who authorized this, we get you nice and gone."

"But then they'll know you were here," she said fervently, and Jet grinned in a way that looked purely _evil_.

"That's the point, sugar. Alliance men say this prison's impenetrable? Well, the Freedom Fighters are here to prove them wrong."

"Is that what we're called, now?" the Duke asked, making a face. "That's really lame."

"Shaddup," Jet snapped.

It was around then that the sirens started wailing.

* * *

><p>(on <em>freedom<em>)

"All right, children," Toph trilled, dragging Xin Fu by the hair and tossing him unceremoniously to the floor with Iroh and (Master) Yu. "Mommy has a _problem_," she continued, in her best Obnoxious Mother voice. "One of you has been giving information to people _we don't like._ Now, I'm not unreasonable, so let's _talk_." She smiled brilliantly and patted the Maria Mark Three. "If you tell me who you were reporting to and how much information you got out, I kill you _before_ I throw you out of the airlock! This is a one-time offer, so talk fast!"

Silence answered her. She sighed.

"Okay. I didn't _want_ to do this, but you leave me no choice. Ambassador, can you do me a favor and get Xin Fu and Yu's - " ("Master Yu!" he insisted) " - bags from their rooms?"

"Of course," Mai replied, her heart still pounding. Toph crossed her arms - there was just too much at _stake_ here, so much that could go wrong, and that big, empty box of Iroh's was just _taunting_ her...

"While she's doing that, let's see what's going on in the cargo bay, shall we?"

"No!" all three of them yelled at the same time, bringing Toph up short.

"Wait, why don't you want me to open this?" she asked, tapping the box. "I get why Grandpa doesn't want it, but what about Thing One and Thing Two? What's your issue with the box?"

She felt Thing One (Master Yu) glance at Thing Two (Xin Fu) and wished, again, that she could see what expression they were wearing. That would have told her _so much_. As it was, she had to make do with the fact that both of their hearts were hammering away in their chests, but that didn't tell her anything she didn't already know. Damn.

"No one wants to tell me? Awesome, opening in three... two..." she started fiddling with the lid of the box, which was fused on and - she realized belatedly - required a code to open. Still, if she couldn't crack a code on a big empty box, she may as well start binding her feet and go back home.

"Here's the bags. I have to make a call," Mai said, returning and all-but throwing the bags at her feet. "I'll be back in a moment."

"Sure thing, sweetcakes," she replied, and then cocked one of her pistols as Thing Two started to inch toward the box. "Don't even think about it. You stay right where you are. And while we're at it, that gun that you've got in your back pocket? Get rid of it." She felt him reach for it at the same moment that the box _click_ed and the lid began hissing, and then Longshot's voice came over the intercom system.

"Trouble at the prison. Toph, at the ready."

"_Bàojúhu__ā__!_" she spat. "Looks like this has to wait. I want you three lookin' very intently at your - hey!"

Thing Two, instead of throwing his gun away from himself like he was supposed to, had lunged forward and grabbed Grandpa, and was now holding him at gunpoint. His heart was beating erratically - he was _terrified_ - in stark contrast to Grandpa's heart, which was steady as a rock. "All right," Xin Fu said, "I want you to re-seal that box immediately."

"Looks like we have an answer," she muttered. "Tell me, what do _you_ want with the box?"

"That's none of your concern," he snapped, and then something _really _unexpected happened - a gunshot rang out and Xin Fu fell to the floor, bullet in his head. She turned; Yu held a pistol in his steady hands. He walked over and wrenched Iroh away from the body.

"Do as Xin Fu said," Yu said quietly, gun at Iroh's head. "Re-seal the box."

Toph hesitated - whatever was in the box was apparently a _big_ deal, since two men from two apparently different agencies were willing to kill for it, and Iroh, for whatever reason, wanted it on the Outer Rim. She guessed it had something that worried the Alliance, since that was who Xin Fu (or possibly Yu, she wasn't sure anymore) had been contacting, and if it was going to hurt the Alliance, then she wanted to use it.

As the hissing slowed and came to a stop, however, she found that the inside of the box became clearer and clearer. Somehow, the box had been designed to keep from the inside being determined by any means, even x-rays or sonar. Interesting technology. She'd have to look into it.

She tapped her finger against the box to get a feel for it, and froze.

Inside it, curled up in the fetal position, was a child.

* * *

><p>In the darkness, cold and damp and feeling like the weight of a thousand sky bison was on his chest, Aang opened his eyes.<p> 


	7. Chapter Six: The Box Opens

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter six: <strong>the box opens<br>**

_"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you."  
>-<em>Yoda_, the Phantom Menace  
><em>

(at the prison)

"Time to go," Jet yelled over the sirens. "Out, into the courtyard." He pushed the Duke aside as he moved to un-holster his weapons. On every side of him, his people were preparing to fight their way through the prison. He heard Bee calling to Longshot over the comm, and knew that their big, metal angel would be swooping in within the next five minutes - barely enough time. "All right, people, let's _move_," he shouted, and unloaded a whole clip on full-auto in the direction of the guards.

They ducked down and began returning fire - laser blasts, that meant Alliance-issue guns intended for non-lethal combat. The big guns would be coming behind their current adversaries, who had probably just been the closest guards to their position when they were found out. He made his way further in the prison - with the guard's station being at the entrance, going out that way was tantamount to suicide.

Longshot knew where they would be.

He had to hand it to Bee, having a contingency plan in place for when things went wrong was kinda nice. They'd have to start doing this more often.

Directly behind him, Katara threw her (still-handcuffed) hands over her head as laser fire pelted the walls around them. He grabbed her by the shoulder and pushed her forward, shielding her with his body (briefly, he thought of the war, and all the times he'd done this before) and pushed her back the way they'd come.

Pipsqueak tossed a grenade behind them as they turned the corner, and he ducked over Katara to shield her as it exploded, then pushed her towards Bee while he prepared to take on whoever had survived the grenade blast. The others kept moving, and he waited for it - three - two - one - with the butt of his gun, he knocked one guard across the temple and then shot the next one in the chest before he turned and followed his crew.

Another grenade exploded ahead and he almost ran straight into Pipsqueak, who was carrying a woozy-looking Duke on his shoulder. "They're trying to cut us off," he said in a low voice. "They stunned the Duke, but he should be up again in a few."

"How many?" he asked, snatching the concussion grenades from Pipsqueak.

"Eight," Bee answered, pushing Katara back against the wall.

"Down," he hissed, and all of his people ducked. He leaned out from the corner and threw two grenades, then whirled back around and ducked as they exploded. He glanced around. "Make that three," he said quietly. "Bee, can you - _shit!_" he cursed, as one of the lasers struck him hard in the side and he crumpled. "Bee, take - _God_ - just get out of here."

"Sir, what's the first rule of combat?" Bee replied, and he stifled a groan. Now was not the time for nobility.

"This isn't war, Bee, just _go_."

"Never leave a comrade behind," Pipsqueak said, and moved him to the wall where he had placed the Duke earlier. "We can handle them."

"More incoming," Bee reported, and shouldered her rifle.

At that moment, all of the pipes exploded.

"What the - " he started, and he heard several other, similar exclamations. In the middle of the pouring water, Katara stood up.

* * *

><p>Katara wasn't thinking straight - vaguely, she was aware that this was a <em>terrible<em> idea because now the Alliance would _know_ and so would Jet and she would have to _explain_ - but she just couldn't sit by and let other people die for her. All she was thinking was a steady string of _no no no no no_ and the water had been_ there_ in the walls and the ceiling and it called to her, suddenly louder than ever before. She could feel it, hear it, _taste_ it humming in the pipes and nudging on her consciousness, _pushing_ against its restraints and _pulling_ at her mind, and when Bee and Pipsqueak refused to leave their comrades behind all she could think of was Sokka hunched over her, holding her back, keeping her from safe from the war zone that had become their backyard - and she simply reacted.

The water _sang_ to her as it rained from the pipes, and she didn't know any tricks, any techniques, any clever ways to use it, so she just grabbed it and _shoved_ forward with all of her strength. It responded violently, surging out of every pipe around her and hitting the guards at chest-height in one big tidal wave.

She glanced behind her. Jet was staring, a calculating look on his face, but Bee grabbed him by the arm and pulled him forward, all business. It was like she hadn't even seen what Katara had done, or if she had, she wasn't surprised at all.

She ran over to help Pipsqueak pick up the Duke, and was surprised when he didn't recoil from her - neither of them recoiled from her. After Zhao's invasion and her mother's death, she had swallowed her power (the word _freak_ echoed in her mind every time she thought about it) and pretended that she had no idea who the secret waterbender was. Sokka had once sworn to kill the person himself, for not stepping forward, for letting their mother get slaughtered because the freak was too much of a _coward_ to face Zhao.

The memory still burned in her throat.

Sokka didn't know - he'd never known - and she knew he never would have said such a thing if he had. He might have understood, if she'd told him, perhaps, but Katara had never been willing to take that chance. She would rather her brother assume she was dead than know the bitter truth.

Bee led the charge out of the prison, using Jet's automatic weapon to scatter their opponents and clear their path. The floor was slick with blood and water, and she almost tripped a few times, but by the time they reached the courtyard the Duke was back on his feet and Jet was limping along well enough.

"Get to the door, Bee, Longshot will be here any second now!" Jet yelled, and they moved like two halves of a whole, Jet smoothly taking his weapon back from Bee and trading her the remaining grenades. She tossed a couple of flash bombs (all they had left) down each direction of the hallway bordering the courtyard. Katara's ears were ringing with gunfire and her head was swimming from the rush of bending and the brilliant flashes.

"C'mon, Lady Katara," Pipsqueak said in her ear, and guided her through the door.

The giant Firefly had never looked so beautiful, sweeping in from the sky, cargo doors open for them. Jet grinned at them.

"The Alliance said that Fèi Téng Shi was impenetrable," he shouted, half at them and half at the guards. "Looks like you'll need a new slogan."

* * *

><p>(at the fire nation palace)<p>

"A woman moving water?" he asked, as the report came in. He had men already moving that way, but he doubted they'd arrive before the intruders had escaped. He didn't mind - it was never about the conspiracy to him. In fact, the arrest in general annoyed him; he'd spent a very long time chasing down that particular mark, and right when she was in his claws, the princess had to go and implicate her in a conspiracy. "Dark skin and hair, blue eyes?"

"I don't know about the eyes, sir," the man gasped over the cortex, "but she was dark - here's the profile we drew up when she was arrested."

He peered at the profile as it came up, the familiar picture - Lady Katara Nerrevik looked an awful lot like her mother.

Zhao smiled.

* * *

><p>(at the companion house)<p>

The text flashed over the screen, and Suki's stomach churned. Katara was out of the prison, and now it was time for her to leave. Luckily, she thought, glancing at Sokka, who was discussing prison schematics with Zuko (apparently plotting their own daring rescue mission), she had a way to do just that.

"She's out," Suki said, and nodded at Ty Lee, who immediately jumped and dove under the bed to where they had stashed their bags. Suki hadn't had the chance to go back to her apartment, so it was mostly filled with Ty Lee's clothes and what they had "borrowed" from Katara. Jin had offered some of her clothing when she'd heard their plan (although she refused to flee with them, since she wasn't under investigation anymore and still had a good job here), but Jin was about two sizes smaller than Suki and four smaller than Ty Lee, they'd declined. "We have to get out of here, _now._"

"No," Zuko said, standing up, "listen. I have to meet with my father. I'll explain the situation, you don't have to leave."

"Right," Suki replied coldly, "because they call him Ozai the Merciful. No wait, that's wrong. Ty Lee, what do they call him on the streets?"

"Ozai the Cruel," Ty Lee answered tentatively, glancing at Zuko.

"Yes, _that's_ it. If you go, he'll kill you."

"This is a misunderstanding," Zuko insisted, and she wished that she had Katara's gift of insight. "He'll listen to me."

"Like he listened when he gave you that?" she asked, pointing at the nasty, years-old burn on the left side of his face. There was a moment of silence, and Zuko suddenly looked downright _dangerous._

"I have to go to this meeting," he said in a low voice, and then turned and walked out of the room. Suki snatched a pillow from the bed and screamed into it. Was she the only one who saw how utterly _screwed_ they all were?

"Where will she go?" Sokka asked, grabbing her arm. "I need to know."

"You can take us," Ty Lee said, bouncing nervously, still clutching the bags. "You have a ship, right?"

Sokka blinked. "You can lead me to her?"

"Um," Ty Lee started, but Suki cut her off.

"Yes," she replied sharply. It wasn't _quite_ true, since she had no idea whatsoever of where they might go once Mai had Katara safely back on her captain's ship, but she did know that she needed Sokka's ship right now, and since the alternative was stealing it from him, she was perfectly willing to lie to him if that kept him on her side.

"Fine," he said. "Let's go."

"Wait," Ty Lee cried, "what about Zuko?"

Suki hesitated; she didn't like Zuko - or his family - much, but he seemed genuinely concerned about Katara and even though he was obviously misguided about his father, he didn't seem to be evil like Ozai was. And her own words echoed in her head: _if you go, he'll kill you_. Could she really leave him to that fate? She looked at Sokka, who seemed to be asking himself the same question.

The answer was as pathetic as it was heartening: no, she couldn't. She just _couldn't_ leave an innocent man to die.

"I don't think we even _can_ help him," Sokka said, but Suki shook her head.

"We have to try."

"I know how to get into the palace," Ty Lee said, as they left through the same window Zuko had gone through only a few minutes before. "I can get us in, if you can get us out," she added, indicating to Sokka.

"I'm Water Tribe," he said, like it was some secret. "I know how to get out of trouble."

* * *

><p>(on <em>freedom<em>)

"Gloves off," Toph snapped, all humor gone at the realization that Iroh - friendly, grandfatherly Iroh with the moon peaches - was smuggling a _child_ from the Core to the Outer Rim.

"Wait, it's not - " Iroh started.

"Close the box - " Yu shouted.

The whole ship shook as Longshot brought her into the air. "_T__ā__ m__ā__de niao!_" she hissed, bolting for the control panel.

"Stay where you are!" Yu yelled, and she froze, hands twitching. "I know what you're up to, and I won't let you do this. You're under arrest for human trafficking, aiding and abetting a criminal in escaping from prison, and probably murder as well." He had already handcuffed Iroh and he started to do the same to Toph, but she wasn't about to sit by and let the lawman arrest her.

She whirled around the moment his hand touched her wrist and punched him in the face as hard as she could. She wasn't very strong physically, so it wasn't as good a punch as it could have been, but it did knock the gun from his hand, and she snatched it off the floor in one fluid movement. Unfortunately, Yu was close to the Xin Fu's fallen body, and he grabbed the gun Xin Fu had threatened Iroh with, turning it on her.

"You can't even see me, little girl," he said, and she smirked.

"What makes you think that?" she replied, and without turning, she began to key in the controls to open the door to the cargo bay. She hoped that Jet didn't need any firepower from her.

"What?" Yu started, and then shot at Iroh as he started to move. It was a warning shot, but it did its job and stopped Iroh - it also alerted Mai, who came in from her shuttle at the sound. Luckily, she was smart enough to keep her mouth shut; from where he was, Yu couldn't see her.

The ship shook again as Longshot brought it in to land in the courtyard of the prison, and Toph smashed the key to open the doors. The moment she did, she heard the _rattatat_ of gunfire from the complex and distant yelling. Everything was still for a long moment, and then Bee burst into the ship, startling Yu.

He turned and, in surprise, fired.

Bee stopped, someone shouted, and then Yu fell to the ground, a silver knife in his back. Toph yelled a few choice cursewords as she rushed to catch the shocked Bee. "What the - " Bee whispered.

"It's all right, it's under control - shit," she hissed, as Jet, Pipsqueak, the Duke, and Katara all came in. They were, for some reason, drenched. "Jet, Bee's been shot."

"_What?_" Jet snapped.

All of a sudden, Mai was beside her, folding her robe into a pillow and placing it under Bee's head. "Ssh, Bee, it's all right," she murmured, and then nudged Toph. "Put pressure on the wound, here."

Pipsqueak jammed the comm button on the control panel and yelled at Longshot for them to go, then closed the doors. Toph ducked over Bee as a few gunshots ricocheted around the room from the guards chasing after Jet, but none of them hit anyone (although she'd have to repair the ship later). "Jet, we need a doctor," she said fervently.

"Here," a low, rich voice said, and Katara knealt down beside Toph and placed her hands on Bee's stomach.

"What are you doing?" Mai asked, and Katara shook her head.

"I'm... it's not helping much, I don't... never mind. We need to get her to the infirmary."

"Jet, doctor!" Toph shouted, and Jet let out an inarticulate yell.

And then the lid came off the box.

* * *

><p>He was cold, and everything around him was dark and smelled strangely metallic - he didn't understand where he was. He remembered being on Appa and then the storm and then - the waves were crashing high and loud, and he was under the water and trying to direct Appa <em>up<em> but he couldn't swim against the current, and then - he remembered letting go.

So where was he now? Was this the afterlife? It didn't _feel_ like the afterlife - he hadn't thought he'd be hungry or cold as a spirit.

He heard voices, and a strange explosive sound, but he couldn't see anything. Had he gone blind? He waved his hand in front of his eyes and saw the shadows move, proving that his eyes still worked. There was a thin strip of light a little bit above him and around him - he was in a... box? Why was he in a box? And where was Appa?

He rolled over onto his hands and knees, and tried to stand up, pushing against the top of the box as he did. It caught, but he soon learned that if he slid it towards his feet, it shifted.

When he stood up, he almost wished he'd decided to stay in the box.

He was in a towering metal contraption - steps led up to walkways strung from the ceiling, boxes lined the walls, and he was looking at a closed door. He turned, and spotted the first body; an older man lay still on his stomach, a knife sticking out of his back. Another man lay not far from him, a hole in head and blood spreading across the floor from his prone form. A woman lay on the other side of the cavernous room, surrounded by not-dead people yelling garbled words and shouting at each other.

Just as he was going to say something, a woman with half her face covered pointed at him (with bloody hands) and shouted something. Another woman stood up and came over to him - he was struck immediately with how _beautiful_ she was. She looked like a Water Tribe girl, with her dusky skin and brilliant blue eyes and warm dark hair. When she reached out to him, he didn't pull away, but then she spoke, and he didn't know what she was saying.

"Where am I?" he asked, and she looked confused. She said something, but it wasn't any language he was familiar with. "Who are you? I don't understand," he said desperately. "Where's Appa?"

"Appa?" she repeated, and he nodded.

"Appa, where is he? You can't miss him, he's big and furry and he drools a lot and he's got six legs..."

"Appa?" she asked, and he realized that - just as he couldn't understand her, she couldn't understand him. He bit his lip, and tried to think of another language - there was that ancient Fire Nation language Monk Gyatso had tried to make him learn? Maybe she spoke that?

"Campa?" he started tentatively - he was reasonably sure that meant _where_. She didn't seem to recognize the word; she just looked at him like he'd grown another head and repeated something she'd said before. An old man walked over to them (blocking his view of what was happening to the woman everyone was crowding around) and asked the beautiful woman something. She shook her head and repeated "Appa" a couple of times. Did she know what Appa even was, or did she think it was his name?

"Appa?" the old man asked, looking at him, and he almost screamed in frustration, before taking a deep breath. Monk Gyatso would be angry at him if he lost his temper, especially around strangers, and wouldn't let his argument of "I was stressed out because I'm the Avatar" go. Monk Gyatso never let him make excuses for himself, and until he got back to the Southern Air Temple, he decided, he would behave in a way that would make the old monk proud, prove himself. Besides, once they figured out which language they all spoke, he'd be able to get out of the strange metal thing and go home, so it was to his benefit to be as nice as possible.

He was just about to try and see if the old man recognized the ancient Fire Nation language when the world shifted and Aang almost fell over. He bolted up in a rush, and heard several people yell, but they sounded angrier than surprised. The beautiful woman reached out to steady him and she and the old man talked for a moment, during which she seemed to realize something. She leaned over so that she was eye-to-eye with him and said something, fervently, like she thought it was _really_ important that he understand her for this. He shook his head.

"I don't understand you," he said, and she bit her lip. The metal thing rumbled and vibrated, and he tried valiantly not to scream (he was the Avatar, and he was almost a teenager now; neither of those screamed like scared flying lemurs just because _everything was moving_.)

He did, however, yelp in terror.

The beautiful woman made a "shush"ing motion with her hands, and then turned sharply to the crowd on the other side of the room. She exclaimed something - she sounded _afraid_ - and then ran over to help another beautiful black-haired woman carry the downed girl out of the room. The lady with half her face covered joined up with a scruffy-looking man, and they stomped away without speaking to him, leaving him alone in the big, metal room with the old man.

"What's going on?" he asked, and the man shook his head in confusion and worry, then took him by the arm and guided him fully out of the box he'd been trapped in, and walked him through the door. It opened with a loud _clang_ that filled Aang with dread - where _was_ he?

The rest of the complex didn't ease his dread at all. Everything looked alien, all metal and cloth and a strange smooth substance that wasn't glass but felt like it, and there wasn't any stone or sky or water or fire or anything that he recognized _anywhere_. Fear clawed its way into his chest at a single horrible question he hadn't asked himself yet: how long had he been in that box?


	8. Chapter Seven: Iroh's Tale

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter seven: <strong>iroh's tale<br>**

_"If we're going to be damned, then let's be damned for what we really are."  
><em>-Jean-Luc Picard, _Star Trek: the Next Generation_

(at the fire nation palace)

"You know," Sokka whispered, "in retrospect... we probably should have thought this through a little better." The secretary-girl (who had not yet given him a name) shot him a glare.

"We don't exactly have a lot of time here," she replied, and jerked him closer to her. He raised an eyebrow - she was really quite a looker, and she smelled like incense and cinnamon, and he wouldn't mind _staying_ this close to her - but it was only because of a passing guard. She sighed and glanced around the pillar. "Okay, how do we get into the throne room?"

"I say we don't," he said, shrugging, and shuffled a bit so that he was fully hidden by the narrow pillar. The woman glared at him and pushed him over a little so that _she_ was fully hidden. He glared. "I mean, he's gotta come out sometime, right? So we snatch him then."

"He'll be _dead_ by then," she hissed, and let out a cute little yelp when he pushed her over again. With a growl, she grabbed him by both shoulders and pushed him against the pillar, then stood toe-to-toe with him (his throat suddenly went dry). "We need to get him before the Fire Lord kills him."

"He might not kill him."

"Your putting your faith in the Fire Lord," she said flatly, and he rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, the Fire Lord sucks _houzi j__ī__ba_, I get it, but look," he said, and she buried her face in his shoulder to stifle her laughter, "we are talking about the crown prince. Even if he's under investigation for... something, he's _still_ next in line for the throne. Unless he's got a really clear-cut reason to, he won't kill him. The people'll throw a fit."

It was really distracting, the way she was laughing into his shoulder. "Monkey cock?" she whispered, and he coughed.

"_Anyway_," he replied, and she sobered up.

"I get what you're saying," she said, "but I don't want to risk it. I think we need Zuko. He's definitely better than his axe-crazy sister."

"Speak for yourself," he muttered, "I plan on never coming back to the Core."

"You think that means the Fire Lord doesn't affect you?" she challenged, hands on hips. He tried not to stare. This was an important mission, and he was _this close_ to finding his sister and so what if it had been a ludicrously long time since he'd so much as kissed a girl (and the last time he had, it... hadn't gone well)? This was way more important than his whimpering libido.

"Because he's had _such_ an influence on my life so far," he growled. "Except for the war," he added as an afterthought, which really kind of ruined his whole point. "Besides that, he really hasn't done anything to affect me."

"He could..." she started, "come up with a reason to start a new war." She didn't sound very sure of this plan. "Or something."

"Fine, whatever. You're sure he can help me find Katara?"

"Yes," she replied quickly, "absolutely."

"That's a lie, isn't it?" he deadpanned, and she blushed. "Dammit, I don't have time for this."

"What else are you going to do?" she asked, pushing him against the pillar and pinning him there with a surprisingly strong arm. "I'm the only person who knows how to get in touch with your sister, and I won't help you unless you help me, _dong le ma?_"

He sighed. "Right, sure. How do we get into the throne room?"

She bit her lip. "I don't know."

He glanced behind him, to the clear hallway - strange, he thought, that there weren't any guards. That spelled bad news; if Ozai had ordered the guards to leave, it probably meant that he didn't want any witnesses to whatever he was doing (or going to do) to Zuko. "We need guard uniforms," Sokka mused, looking around. "We can go in, claiming to have urgent news for the Fire Lord. It's not great, but it's better than sitting here with our thumbs up our asses."

"That seems dangerous," she muttered into his shoulder. He thanked all the gods he'd ever heard of for sturdy pants.

"You're already in over your head," he replied, and raised an eyebrow. "May as well swim."

* * *

><p>Suki didn't like the sound of this plan, but considering that Ty Lee had only guaranteed them fifteen minutes (three of which was spent getting to the throne room, and another four were wasted squabbling behind the pillar), they had little choice. Luckily, the Fire Nation's uniform was mostly archaic-looking armor worn over regular clothing, so they wouldn't have to spend too much time changing into their costumes.<p>

Unluckily, the closest two guards were rather large men.

"We don't look _at all_ like we belong here," she whispered, struggling to tighten the belt enough so that it wouldn't fall off her hips. She knealt awkwardly by one of the stunned guards and pulled his shirt off, wincing at the unhappy realization that he hadn't bathed in a while, and folded the shirt up, stuffing it into the waistband of her pants.

"Good idea," Sokka muttered, and began doing the same thing with the other guard's shirt. She noted that _his_ guard smelled like a gorram department store. Somewhere, a god hated her. "We're almost out of time, it'll have to do."

"We have to fool the _Fire Lord_," she hissed. "Ty Lee can wait, we need to look the part."

"Ty Lee _can't_ wait that long, we need to hurry."

"Shit," she whispered, and almost fell onto Sokka as her foot got stuck in one of the greaves. "How do they put these things on? I've worn _corsets_ that are less stressful!"

"You... corsets?" Sokka said blankly, and she mentally thanked the gods (that hated her) for the darkness of the closet they were sequestered in, because he couldn't see her blushing. Even though the dark made it so much harder to put on the armor.

"I worked as a secretary for a bunch of neurotic Companions," she replied. "A lot of them made my try on corsets. Apparently they felt fat, I don't know. I don't understand Companions."

"And here I thought that was just me being stupid," he muttered, and she snickered. "Here, let me help - shit," he cursed, as he stumbled over one of the unconscious guards and face-planted her shoulder. "Ow," he grumbled.

She was beginning to think his "let's get this over as fast as possible" idea was the best one he'd had yet.

"I think I'm good," she whispered. "It feels like everything's on right. You?"

"As good as I'll get in here," he replied, and she nodded, then pulled the guards to the far back of the room and covered them with a few boxes that had been put in this room for storage. This disguise wouldn't hold water, and the guards would be waking up in only a few minutes, but it would (hopefully) get them in and out of the throne room, which was as much as they could hope for now. They stumbled awkwardly out of the closet and almost ran straight into another guard. _Shit._

Sokka, however, saved the day. He coughed nervously, and then gave a weird little laugh, closing the door discreetly behind him. "Sorry, sir," he muttered, and the officer raised an eyebrow.

"And just what were you doing in there?"

Suki caught on to where Sokka was going, and blushed deeper. She, too, coughed nervously. "Won't happen again, sir," she whispered.

"It had better not. Names?" he asked sharply, and Suki twitched.

"Lily," she replied, giving the first name that popped into her head, "and Chong," she added, elbowing Sokka.

"Private Chong," he repeated.

"Right," the officer said. "I'm putting your names on the discipline chart, understood?"

"Yes, sir," they both said, and then heaved a sigh of relief when the officer left it at that, without dragging them along. She glanced at Sokka and almost burst out laughing. "Let's get this over with," she mumbled.

Together, they marched in a reasonable facsimile of a military cadence to the throne room door, knocked, and it wasn't until an angry-sounding voice said _yes?_ that she realized they hadn't planned anything to _say_ to the Fire Lord to get him to leave. All of the curses that she had ever learned, said, thought up, or made up on the spot coursed through her mind in the second between the Fire Lord's answer and Sokka opening the door.

The throne room was long and lit only with old-fashioned torches - and not the dumb electric kind, but real, fire-and-oil _torches_ - all leading up to the massive throne, upon which sat the Fire Lord, who was currently glaring at them like they had personally stolen and then kicked his puppy. In the center of the room, standing at attention before his father, was Zuko, who hadn't turned to see them but seemed almost frozen in place. For one heart-stopping second, Suki thought that the Fire Lord might have some terrifying power that let him turn people to stone and had turned Zuko into a statue, but then she caught sight of him breathing and realized that that was a stupid theory.

"Fire Lord," Sokka started, and Zuko jumped ever-so-slightly.

"Yes?" he asked, just this side of sarcastically, and Sokka froze, mouth half-open, apparently having just come to the same awful conclusion she had as the door had opened.

"Urgent n-news, sir," she said, "at the - gates." She manfully resisted the urge to wince - Ty Lee was at the gates. They were several shades of _totally doomed_.

"What kind of news?" he replied languidly, and Suki's mind went blank. Sokka picked up the slack.

"An attack, your majesty, from the Independent forces on St. Albans," he said. St. Albans - the planet that famously hosted the scattered remnants of the Water Tribes. Sokka's home. He was risking calling down the full wrath of the Fire Nation on his _home._

"Hmm," Ozai said.

"The messenger said he had more details," Suki offered, "but he couldn't tell us."

"Fine, I'll speak with him. Send him in."

Shit, she thought. _Cào._ "Uh," Sokka said, coughing, "he's in pretty bad shape. We sent some medics out to him, but I don't know if he's well enough to come all this way."

She tried not to cringe at how _obvious_ they were being. Ozai's face was stormy, but he didn't seem to suspect them in spite of their utter lack of grace, and he stood up. "Very well. You're dismissed," he said imperiously, and they marched out of the room, each taking a place on opposite sides of the door to wait for Ozai to leave the throne room. When, after a long moment, he hadn't shown up, Suki poked her head back through the still-open door.

He was gone.

Zuko, however, was still standing at perfect attention. "Zuko!" she hissed, and he jumped, then turned, an _evil_ look on his face. She motioned for him to hurry up, and he made a face, but came over anyway.

"What the hell are you - " he started, but she cut him off.

"Getting you out of here in one piece. Come on!"

"You're insane!"

"And what was your dad gonna do to you?" Sokka asked, grabbing him by the arm and running full-tilt for the exit. "Dance?"

Suki choked back a laugh.

* * *

><p>"We make for Persephone," Jet said, pouring several shots of whiskey for himself, Toph, and Pipsqueak. "Mai says she's got a client there she can meet with, wanted to take her to a gala at a hospital. We get into the hospital during the gala and get some medical supplies to hold us over till we can get to Haven. Questions?"<p>

"One," Toph began, knocking back her shot, and pouring another, "why is this party taking place in a hospital?"

"It's for the administrators," Mai explained, arms folded. Her knives _clink_-ed against each other, as her robe was now acting as a blanket for the strange tattooed boy that Iroh had been smuggling out to the Outer Rim. Katara and Longshot were in the Infirmary with him and Bee now, and Jet hoped that they would be all right. Bee more than the kid, but, well, he didn't wish slavery on anyone, especially not crazy little children who'd been locked up in a box for who knew how long. "They have a ballroom on the top floor of the hospital for things like this."

"Tax dollars well spent," Toph muttered.

"How do we get into the gala?" Pipsqueak asked, propping his feet up on the table and leaning back.

"Mai," Jet said, nodding to her. She sighed.

"I'm getting two extra tickets. I have to play the part of the perfect Companion or they'll suspect me, so once you're in, you're on your own."

"Who's the lucky two with that job?" Toph asked, already scowling like she knew the answer.

"You and me, Tophlet. And before you get started on that rant - " he snapped, cutting her off " - there's a damn good reason. You'll need to be there to unlock the doors as we go. You're the only one who's any good at breaking locks. Besides," he added, shrugging, "with Bee... out of commission, Mai working, and Katara a wanted criminal, you're the only girl we've got. 'Less you think we should dress the Duke up all fancy?"

She downed her second shot and grumbled. "Fine," she muttered, "I'll help."

"Good girl."

"Why's it gotta be you who goes with her?" the Duke asked, raising an eyebrow. "I could - "

"I'm not going to dignify that with a response," he replied sharply. "Now," he said, sauntering over and leaning against the table, face-to-face with their prisoner, Iroh, handcuffed to the doorframe. To his credit, he looked completely serene. "You're about to start talkin', old man."

"I did _not_ know it was a child," he said immediately. Jet looked at Toph, who nodded.

"He's telling the truth," she confirmed, and he turned back to Iroh.

"Hear that?" he challenged. "You lie, she knows. Go on. You didn't know you were smugglin' a slave kid?"

"He is not a slave," Iroh said fervently, and Jet raised an eyebrow. Iroh shook his head. "He _isn't_. I took him because - " he hung his head, and sighed heavily. "Oh Sihnon, I was... powerful. The... person who held my job before me passed the box down to me. It had been in the Fire Nation's hands for... I didn't know how long, and every time I asked, I came up blank. No one knew the box even _existed_. I had to go into the library, through records all the way back to the Age of Bending.

"It was not until I got down to the end of recorded Earth That Was history that I found even a single reference to the box. All it said was, "iceberg, cryogenics." I had no idea what that meant," he said unnecessarily. "I finally found a reference to another reference, that suggested to me that I might find what I wanted in Fire Lord Azula I's diary."

"Who?" Toph asked, swirling water in her shot glass. "Azula like the Princess Azula?"

Iroh nodded. "She was the princess's namesake, yes. She ruled shortly before the end of the Age of Bending - it was she who finally united the Fire Nation under one ruler and took the last major city from the Earth Kingdom's hands."

"I thought the Earth Kingdom was a myth," the Duke muttered, and half the table turned to him in astonishment. "What?" he growled. "Sorry for not knowing ancient history."

"The Earth Kingdom fractured following Azula I's conquest," Iroh explained, "but did not entirely dissolve for... centuries. In her diary, I found reference to someone in an iceberg that she had found in the southern seas, near Water Tribe territory. That was all that was said about it, but it proved to me what I had before only feared - inside the box was a _person._"

"Why would the Fire Nation keep a person in a box?" Mai asked, and Iroh shook his head.

"I wondered that myself, Lady Mai. I searched for an answer, but nothing came to me for... a very long time. Finally, using... archaic methods, I managed to find someone who knew of the box and the person within it. And... that way, I learned that the person within the box was none other than the Avatar."

There was a moment of silence, and Jet blinked. "The what?" he asked, and Mai pinned him with a glare.

"The Avatar," she repeated, and looked around the table. Everyone stared at her blankly. She huffed. "The Avatar is a myth from the Age of Bending," she said, shrugging. "Katara could tell you more about it. Legend has it that the Avatar knew all four classical elements and would bring balance to the world."

"Indeed," Iroh said, "but it is no myth. The Avatar is real, but the Fire Nation has kept him in cryogenic freezing since the Age of Bending."

"Wait," Toph said, oddly pale, "you mean this kid has been frozen in ice for... almost three thousand years?"

Iroh nodded gravely. "He has. That is, I believe, why we cannot understand his speech. He's speaking an ancient, forgotten dialect."

"That's _horrible_," Toph yelled, standing up, disgust written on her half-covered face. "Why didn't you just kill the poor kid?" Jet watched her curiously - who knew Toph could show empathy?

"I could not take that risk," Iroh insisted. "I thought that within the box I would find a fully-grown man or woman who commanded all of the elements, who could bring peace to the chaotic border planets and unite the 'Verse _without_ another bloody war. I didn't _know _it was a child."

"Even if it was a man," Toph shouted, "that's still cruel! Everything he knows is gone, everyone he knew is dead - and totally forgotten - he doesn't know anything about the world or how to live in it! He's completely _alone_, and he can't even communicate with us! How could you - " she trailed off into betrayed silence, and Iroh looked at her with mournful eyes.

"I thought I would be saving billions of lives by inconveniencing one."

"So, you figured out you had the Avatar in a box," Jet said. "Then what?"

"I wanted to help the border planets," Iroh said, and shrugged. "I took the box and left, but the ship I was on only went to Persephone. I admit that I... am not the savviest customer. It did not occur to me to ensure that my captain would take me the full duration of the journey I had paid for. He demanded more money than I could offer and when I told him that all I had remaining was food, he tried to take the box as payment. I... left his ship," he added delicately, "and began searching for another."

"Which was us," Pipsqueak inferred. "I think I heard about that on Persephone," he mused, "a ship caught fire. That you?"

Iroh nodded. "Yes. I had little other choice. I sincerely hope that no one was injured."

"It didn't sound like a huge deal," the Duke said, shrugging. "No one was running to put it out, at least."

"That is good," Iroh said fervently.

"Yeah, that's great," Jet said sharply, "meanwhile, we've got two dead Alliance men on our ship, one of my crew shot, and I don't even _know_ how many fugitives. Great job at that peace thing, Grandpa."

"I didn't think - "

"No," Jet said, cutting him off, "you _didn't._ And now I have to clean up your mess."

"Jet," Mai said suddenly, and he turned to her, fully prepared to unleash hell on her for using _that_ tone, but she merely blinked. "The boy might be useful."

"You want to bargain with a child?" Toph asked incredulously, and Mai shook her head.

"No, but Iroh may have a point. If the child _is_ the Avatar, he might be useful to the Outer Rim after all."

"The war is _over_," Jet snapped. "We needed an Avatar seven years ago. Now? We _get by._"

"Tell that to the Outer Rim," Mai challenged, standing up to him and looking him in the eye. "You _know_ how many people out there are still fighting for Independence."

"And good for them," Jet replied tensely. "But not all of us can stand to fight a losing war."

"That isn't the point and you know it. It isn't about who wins anymore, it's about _hurting_ the Alliance," she said, and he looked away. She was right, he knew it, but he wasn't about to _tell_ her that. "The Outer Rim has enough trouble without Independent factions lashing out at those who are trying to, as you say, _get by._"

"Yeah, Reavers are pushing out further every year," Toph interjected, unwanted, into the conversation.

"I thought that was a rumor," Iroh said slowly, looking around the table.

"It isn't," Mai replied shortly. "Between Reavers and Independents still clinging to war, the Outer Rim is, like Iroh said, _chaos._ If this Avatar really can bring balance, then who are we to deny that to them?"

"Fine," Jet said, waving her away, "we'll take Iroh and the boy out to Lilac, drop 'em off, and let 'em Avatar the shit outta the place. Sounds like a plan?" No one replied. He looked around, and his crew all looked away from him - were they really going to be like that? "Toph?" he asked, hoping for help from the one person he could usually rely on to be callous as hell, but she too turned away.

"He's been frozen for three thousand years," she answered faintly. "We can't do that to a _child._"

* * *

><p>"How is he?" Mai asked, walking serenely into the Infirmary. Longshot and Katara both looked up, but she focused on Katara - looking at Longshot, forlornly clutching his wife's pale hand, was too painful.<p>

"Sleeping," she replied, and tucked Mai's robe a little closer around the boy. "What did Iroh say?"

She took a deep breath - how to explain Iroh's story to Katara? "He said the boy is the Avatar."

Katara raised an eyebrow. "_The _Avatar? I didn't think he existed anymore."

"He's been in cryogenic freezing," Mai replied, "for... a while." Unfortunately, Katara caught the hesitation in Mai's voice.

"How long is a while?"

She looked away. It was heartbreaking, looking at the little boy under her robe, and knowing that - what felt like merely yesterday to him - he'd been a happy child in a past that most people now didn't even remember had ever existed. He'd gone to sleep in an entirely different world than the one he'd woken up to. Toph was right. They _couldn't_ abandon him. "Since the Age of Bending," she replied, and heard Katara gasp.

"That's... impossible," Katara breathed. "How... who..."

She explained the short version of Iroh's story, and by the end of it, Katara looked sick, and just stared at the little sleeping boy.

"What are we doing about him?" Longshot asked, and they both jumped, having almost forgotten that Longshot was there. Mai shrugged.

"Iroh wants to use him to stabilize the border planets," she started, but Katara cut her off, shaking her head.

"He doesn't even speak our language. We need to teach him that first, and then we can work on explaining our world to him, and _then _we can think about the border planets."

Mai rolled her eyes. "You're getting into mommy-mode, aren't you?"

Katara scowled at her.


	9. Chapter Eight: Promises

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter eight: <strong>promises<strong>

_"Your overconfidence is your weakness."  
>"Your faith in your friends is yours."<em>  
>-Luke Skywalker and the Emperor, <em>Return of the Jedi<em>

(on the _blue moon_)

"What part of that seemed like a good idea?" Zuko asked, arms crossed and face clouded. Suki shrugged.

"You were in trouble, I thought, hey, why don't I get him out of this, since maybe he'll be able to help," she explained. "And look at that! You really _were_ in deep shit and needed a way out. It's almost like I'm psychic, isn't it?"

"I _said_ I would take care of it. I knew what I was doing."

"Right," Suki said airily. "How did you plan to do that?"

He looked so angry that she almost believed he could turn her to stone through sheer force of _glare_. "I'm innocent," he said sharply. "I was working on convincing my father when you came in. Katara was never in danger."

"Unless your father didn't believe you," Suki said, "in which case, you would be forced off-planet and she'd be alone in prison. What was your contingency plan, then?"

"Get her out before the news broke that I was exiled," he answered sourly.

"Wouldn't they keep you locked up in the palace somewhere?" she shot back. "How'd you plan to get out of that one?"

"The same way I did before," he replied, like it was obvious. "The palace is filled with secret passages."

Suki blinked. "Oh," she said, and then shrugged, "well, Sokka, Ty Lee, and I took care of it anyway. You're welcome."

"I didn't need your help," he snapped.

"Your father _exiled _you. There was a very real possibility that he was going to kill you, and then we'd all be screwed," she asked lightly, working on peeling an orange. Sokka had apparently just gotten paid and stocked up for a nice, long trip before coming by the Companion House, which meant fresh fruit and vegetables, protein that tasted reasonably like food, and several bars of chocolate that she was currently plotting to steal. Suki had decided to marry Sokka. It was pretty much fate, at this point.

Zuko glared at her from across the table, but she ignored him in favor of her far-more-interesting orange.

"Okay," Sokka said abruptly, coming in from the bridge. "We're out of atmo. You said you could get in touch with Katara if I helped you, so." He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms. "And don't eat all my fruit!"

"It's one orange," she sighed. "You should talk to Ty Lee about your chocolate. She's been giving it a come-hither look or three." Suki was lying through her teeth - Ty Lee was borderline religious in her fanaticism about eating properly, and if she ate chocolate at all, it was the gross dark chocolate that tasted like chalk, and only in very strict moderation. It had always baffled Suki that someone so bubbly _wouldn't_ be obsessed with all things sugar-related, but apparently Ty Lee had been involved in gymnastics since a young age and had developed a taste for healthy food.

Suki wasn't positive yet, but she was working on her theory that Ty Lee was, in fact, an alien.

Sokka, however, didn't know that about Ty Lee, so she was planning to milk it for all it was worth.

"She'd better not touch it," Sokka grumbled, following Suki to the bridge. Sokka's ship was tiny and cramped (although she supposed it was nice for one person) and the dining room was exactly five steps from the bridge, which was itself sitting on top of the only bedroom (where Ty Lee was currently sleeping like a log) and only a few steps north of the engine room. It was like a big, awkward slumber party condensed into ten feet of living space.

Suki keyed in the code to Mai's cortex, and glanced at Sokka. "She might not answer. There's no telling what time it is on their schedule, or what else might be going on."

"All right," he replied tensely, rocking back and forth a little like Ty Lee did when she was nervous. It was strangely endearing, how eager he was to talk to his sister.

"How long has it been since you've seen her?" she asked, and he bit his lip.

"Seven and a half years," he whispered. That was about the time that Katara had come to Sihnon - she hadn't seen her family since? Suki wondered what had pushed her to leave St. Albans and rush off to become a Companion, especially when her family apparently cared about her and wanted her to be safe.

"Hello?" Mai asked, and the picture was surprisingly clear - Sokka kept the gadgets on his ship in excellent repair. "How did you - Suki?"

"Hey, Mai," she replied, and Mai smiled a little.

"You're all right, then?"

"Yup, we got out of Dodge right after your message. Thanks, by the way, for... everything."

Mai's smile was a little tight, but genuine. "It was no trouble," she said, but Suki knew that had to be a lie. Sokka coughed beside her, and she glanced at him.

"Mai, is Katara there?" she asked, and Mai raised an eyebrow.

"She's at the Infirmary, one of the crewmembers was injured," she said. "Do you want me to get her?"

"If you can," Suki replied, and she could almost _feel_ Sokka's excitement. While Mai left to get Katara, he fidgeted uncontrollably with a little nesting doll, and Suki almost laughed. "Calm down," she muttered, and he winced, setting the doll back on the counterspace by the control panel. Suki peered at it - it was Water Tribe, that was obvious from the design, and it looked old and well-worn. She had a sneaking suspicion that it had belonged to Katara, once upon a time.

"Sorry, it's just... I've been looking for her for almost eight years, and now..."

"Why did she leave?" Suki asked. It was strange, really, that Katara hadn't said anything about her family or her home, and had apparently gone to lengths to hide her past from everyone she knew. Strange, and sad, she thought, looking at Sokka's hungry expression.

"I don't know," he whispered. "I just got up one morning and she was gone. She hadn't told anyone, not Gran - our grandmother, or our dad, or... anyone," he said quietly.

"So you just... bought a ship and began looking for her?" That kind of devotion seemed alien, but then, she'd organized a prison break and given up her comfortable life to help Katara. Maybe it was something about the woman that inspired that sort of thing?

"I had to save up the money to, but yeah, pretty mu - Katara!" he cried, as she and Mai came into view.

"Suki, what was..." she trailed off, staring in shock at her brother. "Sokka! You - how - ?"

"I found you," he said, grinning brilliantly.

* * *

><p>(on <em>freedom<em>)

"I found you," Sokka said, and every piece of Katara froze. No, no, he wasn't supposed to have even been _looking_, he was supposed to have just chalked her up to another victim of hypothermia or the war or disease - he was supposed to _forget_ her, to go about his life on St. Albans and forget that he had ever had a sister.

"Sokka, I... how...?" she spluttered, at a loss for what to say. He was smiling so brightly, so _genuinely_, it hurt.

"I've been hunting for you since you disappeared," he explained, motioning for the grinning Suki to move so he could sit. "I _knew_ you were alive somewhere, I just _knew_ it!"

"That's... almost eight years," she said faintly. "You've been looking for me - for eight years?"

She felt like collapsing into sobs - she'd never expected him to go so far, not for _her_. Beside her, Mai guided her into a seat and murmured something about giving her time alone, and then swept out of the shuttle. Katara barely noticed.

"I made a promise," he replied fervently, "to Mom. I _promised_ her I'd take care of you. And when you vanished... I didn't..." he ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "I told Dad I was going to find you. He was pretty ticked," he added, making a face, "said I was abandoning the cause. We got into a big fight over it. I... haven't spoken to him since." He brightened then, and said cheerfully, "But look at you! The last time I saw you, you were a scrawny fifteen-year-old and now! Oh, check this out," he continued, and she smiled fondly - still her goofy, spacey older brother. He held something up to the image, and her heart fell into her stomach. It was a matryoshka doll that he'd made for her just after their mother had died - she'd hunted for it before leaving but couldn't find it.

It was the one thing she had seriously regretted leaving behind. "You - kept it..." she breathed, "for me?"

Sokka blinked. "You're my baby sister, Katara," he said seriously, "there's nothing I wouldn't do for you. Don't cry!" he said, because she was breaking apart at the seams and she just couldn't _help _it.

"Sokka, I thought - I thought I'd never see you again," she choked. "I didn't think anyone would come - not for me."

"Well, then you're a dummy," he replied, smiling, like she was a little child again. There was a pause as the smile slowly faded from his face. "Why did you leave?" he asked in a small voice, and she turned away.

"The war - everything - " she couldn't explain it to him; he'd never understand. He'd been searching for her for eight years because she hadn't been able to face the truth about what she _was_ - could he ever forgive her? "I'd lost so much, I just... wanted to start over, somewhere without... _without_."

"You could have told me," he said intently, "I would have gone with you."

She closed her eyes; that's what she had been afraid of. "I know, but I couldn't uproot your life, too. You and Dad - you were both so sure that the war could still be won and I couldn't - "

"You couldn't make us understand," he finished for her, looking away. "Yeah, we were pretty... fanatical, weren't we?"

She smiled sadly. "A little."

"I'm sorry," he said softly, "_really_ sorry."

"Oh, Sokka, don't apologize," she insisted, swallowing hard. "I didn't - I never expected you to go this far to find me."

"I promised," he repeated, like it was obvious, "didn't I?"

* * *

><p>"We're a couple hours out of Persephone," Jet said. Longshot closed his eyes for a long moment. "I'll stay with her while you're landing, all right?"<p>

Longshot nodded. "Thank you," he said quietly, voice hoarser than usual. Jet chose not to comment on it.

"Hey," he said, shrugging like it was easy, "she's important to me, too. Captain ain't worth much without his loyal right hand man. Or woman, in this case." Longshot gave him a short, insincere smile before squeezing Bee's hand tightly (as though she could feel it) and leaving. Jet swallowed hard - he didn't like seeing his first mate like this, not at all. Bee was always the strongest one, the smartest one, the fastest one. She had saved his life more times than he could count, and when the war had ended and she'd been the only one out of all of his men remaining, she'd come with him on his crazy idea to live free from Alliance control the only way he knew how.

He'd thought, at the time, that she just didn't have anywhere else to go, but now he knew better - Bee was smart enough to have found a way on her own. She'd gone with him because she knew he needed her more than he let on. He didn't feel for Bee what Longshot felt (the thought of kissing her turned his stomach) but he loved her just the same. She was his _comrade_, the cornerstone of his frequently-dysfunctional nakama.

Jet _needed_ Bee.

And now, thanks to this kid sleeping on the table that functioned as a spare bed, her life was in limbo. He _wanted_ to hate the kid, to lash out against him, or - best yet - drop him off on Persephone and be done with it for good. But it was hard to hate a barely-pubescent child lost in a 'Verse that was ten times bigger than anything he'd ever known before. He didn't even speak the language, for God's sake!

Toph was right - they couldn't abandon him, even though everything Jet _was_ said to do so. It was just... Jet remembered being a Sargeant in the war, he remembered having men under his command, _good_ men, men he'd cared about too much, and he couldn't deny that something in Iroh's words had tugged at that part of him. Bringing peace to the Outer Rim... was it even possible? He didn't know, but if this kid could, by some ancient magic, do it... then Jet _owed_ it, to himself, to Bee, to all the bodies under Serenity Valley, to try.

"_Néih hóu_," the boy said, and Jet jumped.

"Huh?" he replied, and the boy bit his lip.

"_Ngo hài b__ī__ndouh? Néih giu m__ā__t'yéh mèhng a?"_

"I have no idea what you're saying," Jet said, crossing his arms. "Sorry, kid."

"_Ngóh m'h'mìhng baak!_ _Appa,_" the boy said, looking agitated. "_Yáuh b__ī__ndouh Appa?"_

"Appa? That your name?"

"_Yáuh b__ī__ndouh Appa!_" he repeated, and Jet shrugged.

"Okay, Appa, I get it. Hey, Appa, I'm Jet." The boy just looked horribly confused. "Appa," Jet said, pointing to the boy, and then to himself, "Jet."

"Jet?" he repeated, still looking confused as hell.

"Right," Jet said, grinning. Ha, that would show Mai - this teaching thing wasn't so hard. She had insisted that he stay far away from the little boy, apparently afraid that Jet would corrupt the poor child, but she didn't know jack shit about him - he was _great_ with kids, and now he was even starting to teach little Appa how to talk right.

"Katara?" the boy asked, and Jet's good humor vanished.

Damn Companions teaching Appa words first. "She's not here," he said, shaking his head wildly. "She's off having lesbian sex with Mai. Yes," he said, nodding, as Appa smiled tentatively. Unfortunately, it turned out that Appa had asked because Katara had shown up behind him.

"Idiot," she snapped, and hit him on the back of the head. Jet grinned.

"Ah, Katara, how was Mai? I'm _dying_ to know."

"Delectable," she replied sardonically, and Jet raised an eyebrow.

"Really? _Do_ tell."

Katara rolled her eyes and sat down next to Appa, placing a bowl of soup in his hands. Appa grinned at her and began to eat. "Okay," she started, holding up a card with the word "girl" written on it, and she held it up to herself, and then to Bee's sleeping form. "Girl," she said, pointing at the word, and then herself. "Girl."

"Girl," Appa repeated, and Katara smiled encouragingly.

"Cool," Jet muttered, and received a glare in response. Katara erased "girl" and wrote "boy" on it, then held it up to Appa.

"Boy," she said, and then held the card up to Jet, glaring pointedly, "_Boy._"

"No," Jet replied, shaking his head. "_Man_."

"Don't confuse him," Katara said coolly, and Jet tried to take the card from her, but she held on. The fight was short-lived, however, since it appeared that Appa didn't understand the man-code, and sided forcibly with Katara. "Thank you," she said, smiling beatifically at Appa, who grinned.

"His name is Appa," Jet said, but Katara shook her head.

"I thought that at first, but now I don't think so," she muttered, biting her lip. "Appa is something he _wants_. He's asking for it. I think - I'm not sure, but I think "_b__ī__ndouh_" means _where_. I don't recognize the words, but I just... he seems really concerned about this Appa."

"You think he might want apples?" Jet asked, crossing his arms and peering at the boy, who was watching them talk in frustration. It had to suck, to be able to hear people talking and _know_ that they had answers for all his questions, but not to be able to actually _communicate._

Katara shot him a reproachful look. "He doesn't speak our language, how would he know that Appa sounds like a fruit?"

Jet shrugged. "Doesn't matter much, we're out of Iroh's stuff anyhow. Speaking of, I need to bitch Toph out for eating all the moon peaches," he muttered, glancing to the door like she would be there with her mouth full of delicious, delicious moon peach. Katara rolled her eyes and began writing something else on the card.

"Bed," she said, pointing at the word, and then the bed that Bee was laying on. "Bed."

"Bed," Appa - or whatever his name was - repeated. "Girl, bed."

"Yes," Katara replied cheerfully, "Girl _on _bed," she said, pointing to Bee and the bed.

"Girl on bed," Appa said, and then pointed to Katara. "Girl on... _coek?_"

"Table!" Katara cried ecstatically. "_Coek_ - table!" Hastily, she scribbled the word "table" on the card and showed it to Appa, who grinned. "That was... he's really smart! He figured out what _on_ meant, just like that!"

"Katara," Jet said coolly, "he's not two. He isn't stupid, he just doesn't know the language."

Katara blushed a little, and glared at Jet. "No one asked you."

"Right," he muttered, rolling his eyes. "I'm just the captain, nevermind me." He looked up as he felt the gravity shift, going into atmo on Persephone. "Looks like we're almost there." Appa, who wasn't used to spaceships, looked queasy and terrified, and - funnily enough - latched onto Katara's arm, although it was hard to tell whether he was hiding behind her or trying to protect her. Did the kid have a crush?

Well, that was just _adorable._

"I'm gonna go talk to Longshot. Katara, you'll have to help Toph get ready for the gala. Mai said we should have a couple of hours to prepare for the heist. I'm leaving Pipsqueak in charge of the ship, _dong le ma_?"

"All right," she replied, and Appa gave him a strange look.

"Dong... le ma?" he asked, and Katara bit her lip.

"Clear," she told him, but the word didn't mean anything. It was kind of sad to watch. "Are we clear?"

"He doesn't know what that means, Katara," Jet said, trying not to feel down at the poor kid's frustration. "Try... understand. Uh... ming... ming..."

"_Ming bai_," Katara snapped. "Don't try to - " she was cut off by Appa grabbing her arm suddenly.

"_Mìhng baak?_" he said, and comprehension dawned on Katara's face.

"_Mìhng baak..._" she whispered faintly, and then turned to him, expression joyful. "It's an old form of _Cantonese!_ I - don't know it, but I can - I can get a dictionary and - " she continued to babble to herself until Jet stopped her forcibly.

"You have more important things to do," he barked, "like Toph's hair and makeup. That'll take a long time," he said, nodding, and ignored the utterly hostile look she was giving him. "Teaching Appa to speak right can wait."

"His name _isn't _Appa."

"And when you find out what it is, you can correct me properly."


	10. Chapter Nine: Persephone

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter nine: <strong>persephone<strong>

_"There's a way out of any cage."_  
>-Christopher Pike, <em>Star Trek<em>

"Toph, hold still," Katara said, weirdly agitated. Toph groaned and tried not to jerk away as the other woman applied mascara to her eyes. She'd had to remove the visor that she always wore (because Jet told her it was either she take off the visor or she wear shoes, and Toph was _not_ about to wear shoes) and it was weird to feel people _touching_ her eyes. She didn't like it. Her eyes were off-limits as far as she was concerned, useless balls that didn't do any good and, if it wouldn't hurt so bad, she would have gotten rid of them by now. But Katara seemed to think differently - she had _cooed_ over Toph's eyes when she took the visor off, and said that they were beautiful.

"That feels awful, stop it," she grumbled, but Katara refused to stop.

"You need to look the part," she insisted. "You and I both want to get this over with, so just sit still and let me do your makeup, all right? I'm almost done."

"Good, because this stuff stinks."

"It does not," Katara snapped, but Toph shook her head (Katara groaned and began pulling out wipes to clean up).

"It does, your sense of smell just sucks so bad you can't _tell_ that it stinks."

She couldn't see it, but she knew Katara was rolling her eyes. She huffed as the Companion cleaned off whatever mistake Toph's sudden movement had caused and began re-applying mascara. It felt like she was dragging a brush through Toph's eyelashes. "Hold _still._ There." Finally, Katara was done, and Toph was just about to sigh happily and go tinker with the engine or something to make her feel _normal_ again, but the Companion stopped her. "Not yet, you need a dress."

"Uh, that wasn't in the agreement," she said bluntly, horrified at the thought of actually having to wear a _dress._ How would she flee the cops if she had a big poofy thing around her hips? That just wasn't _practical_.

"Yes, it was," Katara replied. "You can't go to a gala in... that," she said delicately, pointing at Toph's clothes. Okay, so she wasn't exactly dressed formally, but her breast bindings were opaque (she knew, she'd asked every salesperson on Ariel when she'd bought them) and her pants, while baggy, covered her ankles and _everything._ Sure, she'd known that the belt and gloves would have to go, but other than that, she thought she looked nice. The Duke told her so - and Pipsqueak, too, so she knew it wasn't just the Duke being a horny teenager.

"What's wrong with my outfit?" she growled, and Katara sighed.

"It's fine for the work you do, but for a formal gala, you need something better. What kind of style might you want?"

"Uh, will Mai's clothes even fit me?" she asked, poking with her toes until she had managed to get one foot under the rug - finally, she could see properly.

"Hmm, they'll be a bit long, and probably a little tight in the chest, but I think we can find something," Katara mused, and walked over to the wardrobe.

"Something light," Toph said, "I need to be able to run, in case something goes wrong."

"Right..." she muttered, "Let's see... no, no, hmm... no, no... ooh, this one will be perfect. Here, try it on."

* * *

><p>(at the administrator's gala on the fifteenth floor of saint ninian's hospital in new omashu)<p>

Haru hated hospital administrators. They were all assholes who had completely forgotten about the people they (technically) worked for, made too much money, and didn't even know how to hold a scalpel right anymore. Not to mention the fact that they were all boring old men.

He sighed into his champagne and watched Chang enviously as he danced with the beautiful black-haired Companion he'd hired for the night, wishing he'd thought to hire a Companion. That would make this more fun, and the promise of a little _more_ later on tonight would do wonders for his currently-nasty mood. Just as he was considering going down to the rest of the hospital to check on his patients (even though he was off-duty, he was here, so he may as well), the house manager announced another couple arriving. He took a deep breath and tried not to get mad.

"The Lady Toph Bei Fong, and escort," the maître d' said, and Haru raised an eyebrow - _Bei Fong?_ Surely not _the_ Bei Fongs? What would one of the oldest and most powerful families on Ariel be doing at an administrator's gala on Persephone? He turned (along with almost everyone) at the name, to see who was arriving.

All of the breath left his lungs.

She was _stunning._ Her long, straight black hair was arranged into a cascading bun that fell over her shoulders like a waterfall, her clear green eyes were sharp and pale (and... unfocused?), and she was wearing a lovely, slinky, long mint-colored dress that hugged her chest and hips tightly. Even the Companion paled next to her, and _that_ was saying something.

Next to the beauty in green, her escort looked decidedly diminished, although Haru was a bit biased against anyone who dared to have such a girl on his arm - the man looked _scruffy_, unshaven and uncomfortable in slightly shabby clothes. He didn't deserve a girl like her, Haru decided immediately.

Whispers chorused through the crowd, and the beast leaned over and said something to the beauty, who shrugged and turned a little as a waiter brought in a fruit tray. Her escort rolled his eyes and let her go follow the fruit, then began awkwardly trying to make conversation with a few people in the crowd.

Haru was not the only man watching the beauty's progress, and he wasn't the first one to strike up a conversation with her.

"Lady Bei Fong," a man Haru vaguely recognized as being a vice president, "I would be delighted if you would dance with me."

"No," she replied bluntly, and ran her fingers lightly over the moon peaches. That was when it struck him - the girl was _blind!_ "I don't dance," she added, as a vaguely apologetic afterthought.

"So, you are one of the Bei Fongs," Haru asked lightly, "from Ariel?"

Something passed over her face, but then she smiled. "Yup, originally. Help me out here, will you? Which moon peach looks best?"

"This one," he said, picking out the ripest one and watching her bite into it with ecstasy on her face. He shifted a little uncomfortably. "Would you like a napkin?" he asked, licking his lips and praying internally that she said no.

"Oh," she muttered, "right, yeah, thanks."

Damn.

She dabbed lightly at her lips with the napkin and rubbed her hands to clean the juice off them, looking a little sad at the loss of the delicious fruit. "You say you don't dance," he started, dismayed at the hoarse sound of his own voice, and coughed, "why is that?"

She shrugged. "I can't see," she replied, "so I'd run into people."

"What if you were following?"

"I _don't_ follow," she snapped, and Haru grinned.

"You would rather not dance than follow?"

"Exactly," she said, and punched him lightly in the shoulder (he was surprised that she somehow knew where his shoulder was). "You're picking up on this, Mister Fancy."

"Uh," he said uncertainly, and then held out a hand. "My name is Haru."

"Sure thing, Mister Fancy Haru."

This certainly made things much more interesting.

* * *

><p>Jet almost walked into Mai, he was too busy watching that mustachioed jerk, making sure he didn't hurt Toph in some way. It wasn't that he suddenly felt protective of his mechanic, but he didn't want to clean up the mess that might erupt if she felt wronged by some creeper trying to cop a feel, especially since they were on a mission and her unexpected popularity had already screwed with his simple plan.<p>

"Whoa, sorry," he said, and Mai raised an eyebrow.

"Sir, I would suggest you watch your step," she replied, and he smirked.

"I'd rather watch your steps," he countered, knowing that she couldn't do what she really wanted to do (hit him) since they were at a fancy party. Her date stepped between her and him.

"Good sir," the man said sarcastically, "is there something you want?"

"A dance," he replied, and then blinked, "with the lady." Behind the man, he could see Mai smirking at his near-screw-up. "If you aren't opposed to allowing a poor plebian the privilege?" He ignored Mai's client entirely after that and reached out to take Mai's hand. She rolled her eyes but went along with him, muttering a _I'll be back in a moment_ to her date. He pulled her close to start the dance - a sort of waltz - and smiled brightly at her. "How's your night?" he asked cheerfully.

"Rather dull," she replied quietly, and pushed against his hands, taking the lead. Jet, however, was not one to follow. "Don't you have a job to do?" she asked, as he took the lead from her again.

"I do, but some creep has my mechanic in thrall. This is the best way to keep an eye on them," he added, spinning her out and bringing her back in against him. He liked this, the way Mai danced. She _challenged_ him, always had, and he thrived on challenge. Sure, they spent more time arguing than not, but he'd rather argue with Mai than talk to most people any day of the week.

Mai glanced around him to see Toph and that creep dancing. "That's Doctor Qin," she whispered. "He's a trauma surgeon."

"Trauma surgeon, you say?" he asked, and, while he was distracted, Mai started leading again. He gave her a reproachful look, and she smirked, then picked up the pace of the dance.

"Don't even think about it," she muttered, and he smiled.

"Think about what, my beautiful lady? The only things I'm thinking about right now are in your dress."

She rolled her eyes, too used to his flirting (and his dirty jokes) to get angry. "You're plotting, I know that look."

"Plotting to get you out of your dress?" he mused. "Well, yes, but I think your john has that gig tonight. Have fun, too, he looks like he's good in bed."

"He isn't," she said in a low voice, "I've seen him before."

A laugh bubbled out from his chest before he could stop it. "I thought Companions didn't kiss and tell."

"There won't be much kissing tonight," she replied, smirking a bit and picking up the pace again. He made a face and tried to take the lead again, but she wouldn't let him, which led to them almost tripping over each other's feet. He started laughing, and then Mai snickered, and then her client came up and shoved himself between them.

"Hey," he started, but the man clutched Mai's arm tightly.

"The song is _over_," he said sharply. "Mai, come with me."

"It was just a dance," he replied, "chill out."

"You wouldn't understand the nuances of the relationship between a Companion and her client," the man snapped. "Tonight, the Lady is _mine."_

This turned Jet's stomach. It was one thing to joke with Mai about sex, but the way this guy was talking, he seemed to think that he really _owned_ her - and Jet didn't like the sound of that. Mai didn't belong to anyone but Mai, and this asshole needed to figure that out. "She doesn't belong to you, no matter how much money you pay."

"Tonight, she does," the man growled.

Jet snarled at the man, and was just about to punch him, when something small and green latched onto his arm. "Jet, _darling_," Toph trilled, sounding completely unlike Toph, "I was wondering where you were! Come dance with me, I _love_ this song!"

He scowled at the client as he walked away, Mai on his arm (she turned and shrugged at him a little as she left), and then at Toph. "Why'd you interrupt me? And where the hell have you been?"

"You were about to hit him," she replied quietly. "Which was a terrible idea. And I've been dancing with a cool doctor, thanks."

"We have to get to work," Jet barked. "And punching him _wasn't_ a terrible idea. Did you hear what he was saying about Mai? Fuck that guy."

"Yeah, she will," Toph said, raising an eyebrow (it was weird to actually be able to see her eyebrows), "and yes, it was. You know that's a challenge to a duel on this planet, right?"

"It's a what?"

"Exactly. You mentioned work?"

* * *

><p>(on <em>freedom<em>)

Aang was confused.

In general, but right now he was _especially_ confused. Everyone was gone, and he seemed to be alone in the - place. He took a deep breath and tried to meditate, figuring that that was probably safer than running around, and he was pretty sure that Katara had told him to stay in the blue room with the sleeping (injured?) girl on the bed.

When he opened his eyes, he was standing in a silent swamp. He bit his lip, and tentatively called out, "Monk Gyatso?" but nothing answered. He began to trudge through the muck - he was in the spirit world, that much he knew, but he had thought there would be, well, _spirits_ in the spirit world. Instead, he was alone.

"Hello?" he asked, looking around. It was twilight in the swamp, and eerie shadows were everywhere. The creepy atmosphere was compounded by the total _emptiness_ of the place. "Is anyone here?" he yelled at the top of his voice, and something in the distance stirred.

Slowly, agonizingly, something rose from the depths and began to make its way towards him - a dragon. It peered at him with ancient eyes and bowed, and he crawled onto its head. Dragons were Fire Nation creatures, right? So perhaps this was the spirit animal of the previous Avatar (he felt a pang when he thought about _his_ spirit animal - where _was _Appa?).

The dragon flew him to a small, deserted island, and Aang stared in horror at the devastation of the planet - what had happened here? How long had he been asleep? He walked into an empty ruin of a temple and picked his way through the wreckage, until finally, he reached the top and looked around while the dragon curled up among the stones and slowly began to fade away, like it had been a huge effort to show up at all. As the dragon faded, an old man appeared.

"Avatar Roku," Aang breathed, and the old man looked at him, then began to speak - but his mouth moved slower than his voice.

"Avatar Aang. It's been a while."

"What happened?" he asked, so relieved to be understood that he didn't stop to wonder why it seemed like such a struggle for Roku to talk. "Where am I? Where is everybody? What happened to the spirit world? How long was I asleep?"

"It has been a long while," Roku said, eyes mournful. "You were frozen in sleep for three millennia."

Everything stopped.

"What?" he breathed. "I was... _three thousand _years? That's _impossible!_" he shouted, stumbling over the rocks to get to Roku. "I just left - it was just a few hours! I can't - you can't - no - " he gasped several times, then looked at Roku, who's face betrayed his sorrow, and knew that the Avatar wasn't lying to him. He took a step backward, and then screamed.

* * *

><p>Iroh burst into the shuttle and startled Katara awake. She turned over and looked at him, and then grabbed one of Mai's robes and hastily pulled it over her shoulders. "What's going on, what's wrong?" she asked, and Iroh shook his head.<p>

"It's the Avatar," he said. "Something... he's..."

She didn't wait for him to say anything further.

When she got to the Infirmary, she saw Pipsqueak and the Duke standing in the center, protecting Bee with their bodies, as wind swept in from nowhere in a cyclone. The Avatar was sitting, cross-legged, on the table right where she'd left him, but his eyes and the tattoos on his body were glowing. Without even the start of a clue as to what was happening, she ran in and grabbed the boy by the shoulders. "It's okay," she shouted, "it'll all be okay!" She didn't know who she was reassuring, but it felt like the right thing to say. "Shh, Appa," she said, although she knew that wasn't his name. It was all she had to call him.

"What the hell is happening?" the Duke screamed, and then ducked as the wind picked up a hard plastic box and threw it around in the room.

"I don't know," she yelled back, and pulled the boy into a tight hug even though he didn't respond to her. "Shh, baby, shh," she murmured. "I'll make it all okay."

The words were familiar, she realized; her mother had said the same thing to her when Zhao's army was pouring in from the sky and she was trying to learn how to bend water and they'd called for the unnatural freak to come out. _Shh, baby, shh, I'll make it all okay_, Mother had said, and then walked out to die for her. She swallowed a hard lump in her throat and clung tighter to the Avatar as the wind slowly died down and the glow left his eyes and tattoos.

When she looked at him, she saw that he was shaking and sobbing hysterically. She glanced at Iroh, who walked into the Infirmary, now that it was safe, and laid a hand on the boy's. "The Avatar is the link to the spirit world," he said quietly. "I think... he must have gone there for answers."

"And he found them?" she whispered. Iroh nodded, and Katara held the boy as he cried for all the things he'd lost.

Her chest hurt.

"Shh," she muttered around tears that were threatening to fall from her own eyes. "Shh, baby, it'll be okay, _fong sam_. I'm here," she whispered. "I'm here."


	11. Chapter Ten: Changing Plans

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter ten: <strong>changing plans<strong>

_"You don't need strength as much as speed. We're fragile creatures. It takes less than a pound of pressure to cut skin."  
><em>-Inara Serra, _Firefly  
><em>

(at the gala)

Toph worked on the keypad surreptitiously while Jet watched her back, but she didn't really need him - she could feel all of the people dancing, and she'd know if any of them started to wander her way. After the inital surprise at her announcement (which, she thought, was kind of infuriating since she'd thought that no one would recognize the name this far from Ariel), the crowd had moved on and more or less forgotten about her, with the exception of Mister Fancy Haru (okay, _Doctor_ Fancy Haru).

She had to admit, there was something exhilarating about dancing with a smart, quick-witted man who also happened to be filthy rich. Not that money was attractive to her, considering her upbringing, but it was still a plus. Especially since, in the time she'd been flying with _Freedom_, she'd gotten accustomed to being poorer than most kinds of dirt.

He felt attractive, too, although Jet called him a "mustachioed jerk," she figured that was just because he was jealous that everyone wasn't paying attention to him.

"Shit," she muttered, as something inside the keypad shocked her - that was what she got for daydreaming instead of focusing on the important things. "Okay, Jet, problem."

"What?" Jet asked, and his heartbeat sped up a little with adrenaline.

"I just got shocked, that usually means the system knows it's being tinkered with."

"So, what, you start over?"

She winced. "Um, more like, 'the lawmen come and make us squeal like boarpigs until our insides become our outsides'. I think I can jam the signal, though..."

"Uh," Jet replied, "please do."

"I just need to - oh damn," she mumbled, and hastily stood up. "Incoming, three o'clock."

"What? There's no one - Toph, you can even read clocks," Jet snapped, as a couple passed them. They slowed down, but apparently decided that she and Jet weren't important enough to warrant stopping over. She smirked at him.

"Yeah, but it sounded cool, didn't it?"

"Toph, the whole 'over there at x o'clock' thing _means something_ to most normal people," Jet replied angrily. "You can't just use it to sound cool."

"Sure I can. You know why?"

"No, stop - "

"'Cause I'm Toph Bei Fong," she crowed, and then added, as an afterthought, "bitch."

"I am not," Jet grumbled, "your bitch."

"Nope, that's Mai's job," she replied. "Whoo, I am _on top_ tonight, aren't I? Damn, I love myself."

"Later, Toph, we're in public," Jet said dryly.

She snorted and punched him in the arm. "Touche, Cap'n."

"Just fix the keypad so we don't get anally probed by convicts later on tonight, please," he groaned, and she smirked again before kneeling down to the keypad. She tapped it several times to get a feel for the inside of it, and - there - something was ticking. She grinned. All she had to do was wait, and the keypad would reset itself - it was set up to only send the alert if it was tampered with so many times in a short period of time, to avoid sending out false alarms. Once the timer stopped, she'd be able to continue her work, and more carefully this time.

Usually, she didn't even trigger the first alarm.

Stupid boys.

She tapped the keypad at regular intervals until the timer stopped. It took an unusually long time; apparently, they had set the timer deliberately long to trip up anyone who couldn't hear or feel the ticking (which was more or less everyone). Smart, whoever had designed it, but even the best security men couldn't outsmart Toph. Hell, she'd busted the mainline security at Fèi Téng Shi without even setting foot on Sihnon, and most people said that was impossible.

That was the key, Toph figured, to beating the system. Just find out what was impossible, and then do it.

Easy.

She broke off the bottom panel on the keypad and reached two slender fingers inside of it, moving slowly and smoothly. She found the wires and tapped each of them, feeling for the metal beneath the thick plastic coating to see which ones was actually running current to the lock, and once she had those figured out, she needed to discern the _order_ in which they had to be pressed to open.

This part was harder. She couldn't afford to screw up - they were already running short on time - and this called for delicacy. She tapped the nearest live wire and it _hummed_ in response, just the lightest sense of movement. She traced it back to the hard metal lock, which she tapped - within, she could feel the gears, hooked up to the specific wires. The farthest gear would be the first button.

There - she pressed the first button and felt the gear shift. She went through all six numbers like that, each gear shifting a little more until it finally gave an audible (to her) _click_, and the lock moved to allow the door to open.

"Done," she whispered, and slowly retracted her hand from the keypad, then replaced the bottom panel. She shook her hand to remove the weird electric feeling the wires had left behind, and then turned to Jet. "Ready when you are, Cap'n."

"All right - "

"Dammit," she said, "incoming again."

Jet groaned, and she gasped - it was Haru. Oh, _crap._

"Lady Bei Fong," he said, and she felt Jet shift over while Haru was distracted. He wasn't about to hurt him, was he? "I wondered where you'd gotten of to... uh, sir?" Jet had thrown an arm around Haru and swept him forward, opening the door as he went. Toph followed, confused. "That door was supposed to be locked..."

"Was it?" Jet asked, shutting it lightly behind them. Toph tapped her foot against the floor to ensure that no one was coming toward the door, and when she was sure they were safe, she kneeled down at the door and reached into the keypad on this side of the handle. Luckily, locking doors was much easier than _un_locking them, and doing so was the work of mere seconds. She brushed her hands off on her dress and replaced the panel, then put her hands on her hips.

"What are you doing, Jet? The plan didn't call for kidnapping."

"Plan?" Haru asked, and Jet clutched him around the shoulders tighter.

"Plans change. Mai tells me you're a trauma surgeon, eh?" Jet asked. "That's interesting, _very_ interesting..."

"_Jet_," Toph snapped, but she felt him wave her off.

"Look, here's the deal, Fancy Man, I've got a crewmate with a bullet in her and no way to patch her up. She's in bad shape and gettin' worse, and to make things all the more hairy, I've got lawmen on my tail. Now, what do you say I take you to my ship and you fix her up good? I'll drop you off at, say... Beaumonde, pocket full of cash, and you can make your way back to your nice salary here? Sound like a plan?"

"I..." Haru started, and she could feel his disappointment with her in the way his body shifted. She wanted to _hit_ Jet - she never had any boys looking her way, was it too much to ask that the one who did keep a good image of her? "I don't..." he sighed, and she felt him move a little. "Where is the wound?"

"Lower stomach, near the kidneys."

"How long ago was she shot?"

"About a day ago, on Sihnon."

"All right," Haru said firmly, "come with me, I'll need surgical tools. What do you have on your ship?"

"Standard first aid," Jet replied jovially. Toph followed, feeling dejected, as they walked through the hospital. Feelings were dumb, she decided, since she ought to be fascinated with the ultra-nice hospital and all the people wandering around in it, but instead all she could think was _stupid Jet_ and _stupid Haru_ and, worse, _stupid Toph_.

They made their way to a set of stairs because the elevators apparently had video cameras and he didn't want the lawmen to have any extra proof of who had kidnapped a trauma surgeon. They went down staircase after staircase (Toph lost count of steps around 130) until they reached the bottom floor (she knew because she could feel the ground beneath them and the foundation set deep into the earth and the distant, distant - but _powerful_ - rumblings of magma under a near volcano). Haru led them to a stock room, nodding and smiling and chatting lightly with several people as he went.

"I'll need a bag," he said, once they were in the stock room. "And several kinds of medication. Antibiotics, anticoagulants, that sort of thing."

"I don't even know what that second word is," Jet said. "Toph, start helping me find these... what?"

She sighed. "Yes, Jet, toss me a pill bottle, I'll be sure to get one that isn't poison."

"Shit, I forgot," he muttered.

"How?" she asked incredulously, and he shrugged.

"I'm not used to actually seeing your eyes. It just... shut up."

"_You_ shut up," she snapped, and tapped her foot on the ground again. "I'll be the lookout."

"Fair enough," Jet replied, and Haru looked between them, heart beating out a strange, unfamiliar rhythm.

"How do you... do that?" Haru asked, and she smirked.

"The most powerful and overlooked sense," she answered, grinning, "_touch._ I feel the vibrations through the ground."

"That's... that's incredible," he said, in awe.

It was, but it also wasn't quite enough of an explanation. It was the magma that made her wonder - she could feel it set so deep into the ground and it had this weird _song_ to it, the way it vibrated and pulsed and _pushed_ against the rock around it, and she felt like, if she could just get close enough to it, she could make that volcano blow up. But regular people - even regular _blind_ people - shouldn't be able to feel something that far away. And the detail she had been able to see in the keypad, and on the shelves in this room... touch didn't explain it.

But then, how did she do it? It had been a part of her for so long that she couldn't even remember learning to do it. It was just... natural.

She thought of the badgermoles at the zoo, and the raised letters on the plaque talking about them, and wishing she could read, just so she could know more about the animals she felt such a kinship to. At the time, she had thought it was because they were both rare and trapped, with people constantly poking on the glass and demanding things from them, but now she wondered if there wasn't more.

Legend held that the badgermoles were the original earthbenders. She didn't _want_ to believe it, but the Avatar was real and sitting in her infirmary, so anything was possible, wasn't it?

"All right," Jet said, startling her from her reverie. "These are all the antibiotics I could find."

"Um," Haru replied, looking through them as he put them in the bag, "put this one and... this one," he said, picking out a couple, "back. They have to be given at really strict times," he added, glancing at Toph like he was saying it for her benefit, "and only through IV, so..."

"Someone's coming," she hissed, and felt Haru nod. He took the bag and handed it (with all of the vials) to Jet, then moved him over so that he was out of view. "What are you - "

The door opened then, and another doctor came in. Haru handed Toph one of the vials that he had just pulled out of bag. "Okay, you'll inject this into the stomach every six hours _on the dot_, understand?" he said, and she picked up on it.

"Yes," she replied, and smiled brilliantly. "Thank you so much, doctor, for seeing me now. I know, with the gala, it wasn't the best time, but..."

They continued talking, Toph making up every horrible symptom she could come up with for Jet to be suffering from ("and then his... you know... well, it just got hard like _that_ and the little kid in his lap really panicked and then...") while Haru struggled not to burst out laughing and Jet grumbled, hidden underneath storage boxes, until the doctor had what he had come for and left. As soon as they were alone, Haru lost his composure.

"You're a bitch," Jet said, but he was snickering.

"I know, isn't it great?" she replied.

* * *

><p>(on the <em>blue moon<em>)

Suki was playing _go fish_. She would have been playing poker, but Sokka refused to play cards and Ty Lee didn't know the rules, so she'd resorted to playing the only game that everyone knew how to play. "Chill, would you?" she snapped at Sokka. The way he was tapping his foot was shaking the whole table.

"Go fish," Zuko muttered darkly, clearly bored out of his skull. Exile wasn't treating the already-surly prince well, and she was already planning to force Katara to work her magic on him so that she could stand to be in his presence.

"Look, Sokka, she said she'd meet us at Beaumonde. That's not for another week, and I am _not_ sitting around with you in this mood for the next week," she said. "_Period._ So _chill._"

"I know some calming techniques," Ty Lee chirped. "They're great for the body and the spirit."

"Translation," Suki mumbled, "Ty Lee is horny." Only Zuko heard her, and instead of laughing, he just winced.

"I'm sorry, but I just..." Sokka said, running a hand through his hair. "I haven't seen her in years, and I can't shake the feeling that she was hiding something from me, and... sorry," he muttered. Ty Lee heaved a sigh.

"Oh, _Sokka_," she said, "isn't it _obvious?_"

Zuko looked up, horror on his face. If Sokka saw, he didn't make the connection. "Isn't what obvious?" Sokka asked, and Suki cringed in anticipation.

"I'm gonna go... away," Zuko said, a little lamely, and suddenly abandoned his cards and bolted. Unfortunately for him, there was only so far he could go on Sokka's cramped ship. Ty Lee, unconcerned, began rifling through his cards.

"Katara didn't want you to know about her job," she said lightly, "ooh, yes! I got another two pairs!" She looked up, and saw Suki and Sokka gaping at her in unison, and blinked. "What? I've been trying to get the other nine _forever_ and he had it the whole time. Cheating jerk," she added under her breath, glancing in the direction Zuko had disappeared, even though Suki didn't remember Ty Lee ever asking Zuko for a nine.

"What job?" Sokka asked, and then it dawned on Ty Lee that Sokka didn't _know._

"Oh," she said flatly, and looked to Suki for help. "I'm gonna go... do... something," she said, and glanced sideways at Sokka. "Something important, and not here." With that, she bolted after Zuko, leaving Suki alone with the confused (and angry) Sokka. She sighed into her cards, then languidly reached over and plucked Ty Lee's (and Zuko's) hand.

"She lied to me!" she cried, and Sokka coughed pointedly.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Um," Suki started, and then finally looked up at Sokka. "Well, there's no way to ease into this, so... look, your sister is a Companion."

Sokka blinked. "Pardon?" he said, tilting his head. "I could have sworn you just told me that my sister is a _whore_, and... I must have misheard you."

"Companions are not whores," Suki snapped. She'd made this argument about fifteen thousand times before, and frankly, she had thought better of Sokka, than to assume he would be one of _those_ guys, who thought that all of the Companions were worthless, dirty tramps - especially when his sister was one of the most insightful, considerate, and empathetic people Suki had ever met. Was it too much to ask that he be at least similar?

"They have sex for money. That's the definition of _whore._"

"Companions have years of training. Really," she added, in as light a tone as she could, "they're closer to Geisha than prostitutes."

"It doesn't matter because - why am I having this argument?" he asked himself, and then snatched the cards she was steadily shuffling (to play solitaire, since her card buddies had fled the premises). "You're telling that my sister became a - a Companion?"

"Yes," Suki replied heavily, "she did. She was there before I got the job as the secretary, so don't ask me when. Hell, I didn't even know she was Water Tribe until you sauntered in," she said. "Katara was always really secretive about her past. Although," she added, as an afterthought, "I should have figured out she was Water Tribe when she refused to see Zhao so many times."

"Zhao was - that - that _person_," he spluttered, like it was causing him extreme difficulty to _not_ froth in rage, "tried to have _sex_ with my _sister?_"

"Emphasis on the tried," she assured him, cleanly neglecting to mention the now-defunct meeting Katara had had set up with the Admiral. "She always found an excuse to get out of it."

"Did he know who she was?" Sokka cried, "Was he trying to rub it in our faces that he beat us, or - "

"I think he'd just heard she was really hot," she said, cutting him off before he could get into a rant. Sokka turned a strange color and sank back into his seat. She waited for it to hit him. Three... two... one... a-ha, there it was!

"And _Zuko_ - that's how he - he - _gah!_"

Sokka fumed at his seat. Suki played solitaire.

Another week to Beaumonde.


	12. Chapter Eleven: Ginseng and Jasmine

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter eleven: <strong>ginseng and jasmine<br>**

_"Maybe you're afraid that if you let yourself start to feel something, you won't be able to stop."_  
>-Chatokay, <em>Star Trek: Voyager<em>

(on _freedom_)

The boy's mood had soured utterly following his breakdown - it seemed to Katara that Iroh was right, and he had somehow, between Toph and Jet leaving for the gala and Iroh bursting into Mai's shuttle, figured out just how out of his own time he really was. Katara struggled to get him to eat, but he seemed opposed to touching anything, just curled up within himself, occasionally crying but mostly just staring into space.

It was about two in the morning when Toph and Jet returned, and they weren't alone.

"Looky what we brought home!" Jet cried cheerfully, and then looked around the Infirmary. "What the _hell_ happened here?"

"It... the boy, he..." Katara trailed off, unsure of how to even start explaining. "Who is this?"

"This," Jet replied, picking up a few stray boxes and bottles that had been thrown about in the boy's unexpected cyclone, "is a trauma surgeon. Haru, meet Katara, fugitive Companion."

She shot Jet a reproachful look, but shook Haru's hand anyway. "Trauma surgeon... how did he get you here at two o'clock?" she asked, hoping that the answer wasn't what she thought it was.

"I was at the gala," he answered, "and I danced with the lady," he indicated to Toph, but Toph had vanished as soon as she had helped Jet deposit Haru in the infirmary. He paused and looked at the space where Toph had been just seconds before, confused. "Uh, Lady Toph, and, um, they roped me into helping."

"They kidnapped you?" she asked, reading between the lines, and Haru shrugged, then smiled tensely.

"I'm looking on the bright side," he said, "I've been wanting a vacation. I spoke to my supervisor before we left and told her that I had come down with a nasty illness and would be out for a while. The captain tells me that I can return after we get to Beaumonde."

"That's a week out, and another back," she muttered, and Haru made a face, walking over and peering at Bee's still form.

"What's wrong with the boy?" he asked, pulling back Bee's bloody shirt and cutting the bandage that she and Mai had tied there yesterday. She glanced at the Avatar.

"He's... going through a rough time," Katara replied uncertainly. She glanced at Jet to see if he was going to explain anything about not-Appa to Haru, but he wasn't forthcoming. "I don't think there's anything physically wrong with him."

Just everything emotionally, she thought, and laid a hand on his shoulder. He didn't seem to notice.

"He doesn't speak English," Jet explained suddenly, "so don't worry if he starts spouting gibberish."

Haru blinked, and began pulling out tools, more concerned with Bee's wound than with the boy. "What language does he speak?" he asked absently, tying a surgical apron over his suit and rolling up his sleeves.

"Cantonese," Katara replied, "or, well, an old dialect."

"Hmm," Haru replied, washing his hands in the unused sink. He glanced around. "Do you have gloves?"

Jet blinked. "Um, somewhere?" he replied dumbly, and Katara shoved him out of the way.

"They're in here," she said, opening a cabinet - when she and Mai had brought Bee in here, they'd hunted for a ridiculously long time for bandages, so Katara knew the Infirmary altogether too well for someone who'd been on the ship for less than two days - and held out the box of latex gloves. Haru took two out and nodded to her.

"Take two for yourself," he said curtly, "I'll need an assistant."

* * *

><p>"You know about bending, don't you?" Toph asked, unconcerned with the fact that she had just woken an old man from an apparently deep slumber. This question was weighing on her, and she <em>had<em> to know. "C'mon, wake up, Grandpa."

"Give me time to get up," he croaked. "I'm old, my bones don't move like yours."

"I know, I know," she said, agitated, and sat on the bed next to him. He slowly rose and began hunting through his belongings for something. Since they'd figured out that Iroh wasn't a slaver, they'd un-handcuffed him and, for the time being, put him on house arrest (or, what passed for house arrest on a spaceship) and confined him to the passenger dorms until further notice. He didn't seem to mind much, so long as the boy he'd been smuggling was safe. "Look, I want to know everything you know about bending. This is important."

"Why?" he asked, rummaging through one of his bags. "A-ha!" he said, and then turned around. "Lady Toph, could we, perhaps, have this discussion in the dining room?"

She hesitated, but only for a second - Jet would be ticked that she'd let him out of his room, but Toph wanted answers and didn't particularly care where she was when she got them - and nodded. "Sure, let's go. I want to know because... um, just because," she finished lamely, unwilling to share her concerns with the old man just yet.

"Well," Iroh mused, shuffling around the cramped kitchen. "Would you like some tea?" he asked, and Toph blinked.

"What?"

"Tea," he repeated. "I have found that there are few ills that a good cup of tea won't cure. I have many kinds, although I was planning to brew a pot of jasmine and ginseng - a good morning blend. Would you like to share the pot with me?"

She sighed, and fell into her chair. "Yeah, why not?" she muttered, and raked a hand angrily across her eyes, wincing at the oily feeling the makeup had left on her skin. She was _tired_, but she wanted to know if she was a bender, and, if so, _why?_ She was just a nobody mechanic, no matter how she might carry herself, and she certainly wasn't some kind of hero that legends were made of - most of the time, she had trouble just keeping the ship in repair. What intelligent creator would gift _her_ with the supernatural power to control an element?

Iroh set a teapot on the table, and it was hot, even though she hadn't heard the kettle whistle, and it hadn't been at all long enough for the water to heat up properly. She poked it curiously. It was a porcelain teapot, expertly carved - she could actually _see _the details in the lotus flowers that decorated it - and inside was piping hot water and shredded tea leaves inside a metal mesh basket.

Her own ability unnerved her all of a sudden - how could she discern that much detail? It wasn't - it wasn't _natural._

"Bending," Iroh began, pouring two cups of tea and handing one to her, "is a spiritual gift. Once, it was far more common than it is today, and people used it to create as well as for defense. It was as much a martial art as it was anything else." She stuck a finger in her cup and imagined turning it to ice - it didn't feel right; she picked up the cup and imagined morphing it into another shape, and that felt more like it - she gasped as hot tea spilled over her hand, the cup warped in her hand.

"Augh!" she cried, and Iroh rushed to help her clean off her hand. "What the - what happened?"

She felt Iroh sit down hard on the chair opposite her. "Porcelain," he said quietly, "is made from clay. _Earth._"

Toph suddenly felt very, very small.

* * *

><p>Aang watched over his knees as Katara and the strange man cut into the sleeping girl and began poking around in her stomach. He knew he ought to feel something - horror, or disgust, or at least fascination - but all he felt was cold.<p>

Three thousand years? How did that even happen?

And Appa - Appa was _dead_ and so was Monk Gyatso and all of the people he'd ever known and - he took a deep breath. That path led to madness, to the chaotic sound of a thousand angry lifetimes taking over his body, and Katara - Katara had told him not to worry. That was the only thing he'd understood that she had said, _don't worry_. And she'd held him so tight and she'd been so _scared_, and he didn't want to scare her like that again, didn't want to make her speak in _that_ tone again, so he resolved not to go down that path.

But then, what was he to do? The spirit world had died without the Avatar, and it seemed like the whole world had just... gone on without any of them. What did he do?

He closed his eyes and swallowed _hard_. He had to start by learning the language - communication, first, and then he could figure out where to go from there. Did he still need to learn the elements? Did bending even exist anymore?

He felt sick; he'd gotten his wish, he'd gone to a world where the Avatar didn't exist, and he didn't have any responsibility, but it meant that everything he knew was gone. "I didn't mean it," he muttered. "I would have done it, I would have been the Avatar. You didn't have to do this to me," he croaked to no one, tears in his eyes. Katara glanced at him and reached out to touch him, but her hands - covered in a strange, pale glove - were bloody, and she stopped.

The strange man said something to her, and she responded, and then turned back to the sleeping girl.

What had Katara been teaching him? All he could remember was "girl on bed" and "table" - she hadn't had time to teach him anything further, the evil-looking man (Jet, he had called himself) had made her leave. But Katara had picked up on his language, and even if her speech was stilted and broken, it was still _understandable_, so maybe this would go easier now that she understood?

He looked at the beautiful woman at the bed and wished that she wasn't so much older than him. It was a stupid thing to be thinking, but he couldn't help it - he was twelve, and hormones were new and strange, that hadn't changed in the time he'd been frozen. Katara was _so_ beautiful, and _so_ kind. As far as he was concerned, she was as perfect a woman as there was, but she was so much older that she'd never think to _be_ with him.

But she was the only one who understood him, the only one who even _tried_ to, and she spoke with a rich, beautiful voice that he liked to hear even though he didn't understand it, and he wanted her to smile more. He sighed.

If only she was younger, he thought.

"Hello," he said, to see if they would notice the patterns in his speech. "My name is Aang. You're Katara. I don't know who the other guy is, or who the sleeping girl is, but she's pretty. Nothing compared to you, Katara," he added, thinking privately that he was being kind of dumb, "but she's definitely pretty. Hey," he said, as both of the people turned to him and peered at him curiously. "I'm Aang. I don't think you know my name."

"Aang?" Katara said, walking away from the sleeping girl (the other man said something that was probably a protest) and pointing at him. "Aang?"

He nodded, and pointed at himself, feeling completely dumb and hating that they didn't even speak the same language. "Aang," he repeated, and then pointed at her, "and you're Katara."

All of a sudden, she rushed forward and pulled him into a hug (the man rolled his eyes and yelled something out to her, but she ignored him). "Aang!" she cheered, and he smiled. It was a small, ridiculous point in the larger scheme of things - what was a name, when he had the whole spectrum of an entire language to learn, and a whole universe that he didn't understand? - but she was so happy to have it that he couldn't help but smile.

It was small, but it felt like a victory.

* * *

><p>Toph fell into the seat. "I'm a bender," she said, trying to wrap her mind around it. "I'm an earthbender, like the badgermoles."<p>

"Badgermoles?" Iroh asked, pouring her a new cup of tea (into a mug he had snatched from the counter). "I thought they were extinct in the wild?"

"They are," she muttered, a little miserably, and touched the cup tentatively, a little afraid that it too would break at her bender-touch. "The zoo... on my home planet, they had a few."

"There are few zoos in the 'Verse that still have badgermoles," he replied lightly. "Lady Toph, it will not break if you hold it."

"Yeah, like the last one?"

"Lady Toph, the bender controls the element," he said, like she didn't already know, "not the other way around."

She paused at this - _she_ controlled the earth. If she thought of it like that, it didn't seem so creepy and strange and _unwanted_. "It just... it's unnatural," she whispered, and Iroh scoffed.

"Nonsense," he said, "bending is one of the most natural things there is. It is spiritual, Lady Toph, and it is centered _in_ nature. You, with your extraordinary sense of touch, with your affinity for the _free_ things in the world, are uniquely conditioned to be aligned with the earth. Earth is the element of stability, strength in the face of adversity."

"What about the other elements?" she asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.

"Water is the element of change," he explained, "it flows, moves, and molds to new situations. Air is the element of freedom, earth's natural opposite - and, like yin and yang, its closest ally - it rushes, flies, and cannot be contained. Fire is the element of life, passion, and it's the most dangerous element, difficult to control. In contrast, earth _is_ control, and willpower. I am not surprised to find that you are an earthbender, my tenacious Lady Toph."

She thought about that, and the germ of an idea formed in her mind; she remembered the fevered touch of Iroh's hand when she had shaken it, the smoky rattle in his lungs like something was burning within him, the hot water that hadn't seen a burner, and then his plot to save the 'Verse by stealing away his inheritance and unleashing it upon the outer rim, his calm determination in the short-lived fire-fight, the way his heart hadn't changed pace even once, the way he had escaped the previous ship he'd been on. "You're a firebender, aren't you?" she asked, and she felt his heart pick up pace in surprise. After a moment of silence, he chuckled.

"I am indeed, Lady Toph, although I wonder how you knew."

"You sound like you've got a fire inside you," she explained, and then made a face. "That sounded less creepy in my head."

He laughed, a deep, warm belly laugh. "I understand what you mean," he said. "Fire is life, and our flame burns within us. Much like the way you are always hyper-aware of the earth around you, I contain fire inside me."

"And... waterbenders and airbenders?"

She felt him shrug. "I cannot say for certain, but I would assume that they, too, are always aware of their element."

"That must be weird," she said, agitated, "to see the water in everything."

"No stranger than your ability to feel the earth in everything," he said, and she heard him take a loud sip of tea.

"That _is_ strange," she replied, feeling sick to her stomach. "I just didn't realize _how_ strange until today."

"That brings us to my question," he started, and she drank her tea - it _was_ good, light and flowery and soothing. She suspected that he had chosen this tea because he had already guessed that she was a bender and might be afraid of it. "What brought this up tonight?"

"I..." she began, then bit her lip and rested her chin on her hands, tapping the floor with her feet. She could feel the whole ship - Jet outside the infirmary, Katara and Haru standing inside of it, the Avatar sitting on the table, Bee's slow, slow heartbeat on the bed. In their bunks slept Longshot (fitfully, tossing and turning), the Duke (sprawled out on his bed), and Pipsqueak (curled into a ball around the teddy bear that only she knew he had). On the street outside, Mai's soft footfalls were making their way in, returning from her client - they'd be leaving soon.

It was oddly calming, to focus on the way everyone around her fit into her world.

"There's a volcano," she said finally, "about a... half a mile away, I guess. I could feel the magma, and I thought - well, I thought it was strange. It was like... it was _singing _to me," she said, tilting her head and wishing that she could look someone in the eyes - to _see_ their reactions on their faces. "Not really, I mean, not the way Bee sings in the bath when she thinks we can't hear her, but... this low rumbling song. Like it was waking up after a long sleep," she added, without really thinking about it.

"Your bending has been dormant," he mused, "but with the return of the Avatar, I suspect that the spirit world is reawakening. Since bending is spiritual, those who have the gift are... experiencing this awakening. I, too, have noticed that my fire is burning hotter than ever before."

She blinked. "So, my spirit is... waking up?"

"That is my theory," he replied, sipping his tea. "The world is changing, my lady," he said softly, "and we must change with it."


	13. Chapter Twelve: Into the Black

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter twelve: <strong>into the black<strong>

_"There's something not right here... I feel cold. Death."  
>"That place is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In it, you must go."<br>"What's in there?"  
>"Only what you take with you."<em>  
>-Luke Skywalker and Yoda, <em>the Empire Strikes Back<em>

(on the tower-class spaceship _prospero_)

"Their trajectory leaves little doubt as to their destination, sir," the navigator said. "Both the Cutter and the Firefly are making for Beaumonde."

"Good," Zhao replied. "If it comes to fighting, don't hesitate to destroy the Cutter. We need the Firefly, and the fewer opponents we have, the better."

"Sir?" the navigator began uncertainly. "Our intelligence is almost certain that the prince is on the Cutter."

"Of course," Zhao said lightly, "but he's been exiled, and the princess is being groomed to take the throne whenever the Fire Lord passes - " which would be sooner rather than later, if he and Azula had anything to say about it " - and the cargo on the Firefly is far more important than a banished prince."

"What could possibly be - "

"That's above your pay grade, Marten," Zhao snapped, and the navigator turned back to the controls immediately. Azula was right - people were so much easier to deal with when they were terrified of you. He'd have to listen to her advice more often. That disgraced fool of a prince Iroh had insisted that he "understand" his men and treat them like a father might treat a son. Well, Iroh had tried and failed completely to take Persephone from the Independent forces, but when Zhao - and his "nasty treatment" - came in, the planet was under Alliance control in two weeks, which Zhao saw as proof of concept for his plans.

When the Fire Lord had told him that the contents of the box were extremely sensitive, he had gone searching on his own for what that might contain - luckily, he had an ace up his sleeve in the form of the beautiful young Princess Azula (whom he would formally court, once this was over), an ace who had been tailing her uncle's similar research and followed him to his conclusion.

"It's the Avatar," she'd told him, "and I want you to bring him to me."

Of course, the Fire Lord had told him to bring the box directly to _him_ without going to anyone else or even telling them what they were looking for (besides the Fire Lord's disgraced older brother), but Zhao wasn't stupid. He saw the writing on the wall: Ozai's time was coming to an abrupt close, that little hiccup with Zuko's _xiao tàitai_ notwithstanding. It was clear that Azula was moving her pieces into play, and Zhao didn't mind being one of those pieces.

Besides, he was playing her just as completely as she was playing him. She was young, and had a _thing_ for older men, and as long as he kept her interested in his body, she was putty in his hands.

He smirked. It was just a matter of time before he had the Avatar _and_ the princess in his possession.

* * *

><p>(on <em>freedom<em>)

"Captain," Longshot said, voice echoing through the halls, "can you come up here?"

Jet looked up at the speaker, and then glanced at the poker game that he was currently losing at the dinner table (Mai was _slaughtering_ all of them; damn that woman's poker face!) and shrugged. "Looks like we have to call it quits, boys," he drawled, and tossed the coin he had lost over to the smirking Companion. Never let it be said, he thought, that Jet didn't know how to lose with grace.

He bounced up the stairs onto the bridge, where Bee was sitting (somewhat awkwardly) with Longshot. They were both pale. "What is it?" he asked, and Longshot turned to him, then pointed to something on the monitor.

"A stationary ship, seventy degrees that way," he said.

"So? This is pretty well-traveled space," Jet replied, trying to be calm. There were very, very few reasons that Longshot would call him in for something like this.

"Sir," Bee said hoarsely, "they're flying without core containment."

Jet's blood froze - that was _suicide._ He looked at Bee and Longshot, and saw that they had made the same connection he had. He took a deep breath, and nodded, then took the intercom and pressed the _open all_ button. "This is your captain speaking," he said into the microphone. "We're coming up on a ship, looks like it might be Reavers. They aren't moving, might not be hungry, so I want you to remain calm. Mai - the infirmary, you know what to do."

It was grisly, but Mai was the only person he trusted to be cool-headed enough to do it - fill out overdoses of morphine in the vials set aside for just this occasion. If all else failed, if the ship was boarded and they couldn't fight them off, then no Reavers would get the satisfaction of killing them.

"What do you want us to do, sir?" Bee asked, and Jet crossed his arms, staring hard into the black space outside the window.

"Wait," he replied quietly. "They might not attack. We wait and see what they do."

* * *

><p>"Reavers?" Aang repeated the word in confusion, and Katara turned to Haru, who looked just as lost as she felt. Reavers were a <em>myth!<em> They weren't supposed to be - Mai swept into the room, paler than usual.

"Mai - he's joking, right?" she asked, knowing already that Jet wouldn't joke about this. Haru looked from Mai to Katara.

"Reavers? That's a campfire story they tell to scare little kids into being good!" he cried. "What kind of joke is this?"

"It's not a joke," Mai snapped, moving Aang over and taking out a little bag filled with vials and began rooting around the Infirmary. "Haru, where is the morphine?"

"Morphine? Why do we - " he trailed off, staring in horror at Mai. Katara felt faint all of a sudden.

"Is this really that dangerous?" she asked weakly, and Mai swallowed.

"I'll tell you what Bee told me the first time we came across them," she said quietly. "If they take the ship, they'll rape us to death, eat our flesh, and sew our skins into their clothing, and if we're _very_ lucky... they'll do it in that order."

Katara gripped the counter for support, and then closed her eyes tightly. "If that's the case, then let me help," she said softly, and pulled out the box of morphine vials that they kept in case someone needed surgery. "Why is this your job?" she asked, drawing enough morphine into each empty vial to kill a grown man. "You're not even part of the crew."

"I'm the only one he trusts to do it," she replied, and that single sentence held so many unsaid things that it made Katara ache. Aang tugged on her sleeve, confused and scared.

"Bad," she told him, since he hadn't yet learned enough of the language to comprehend what Mai had said.

"Danger?" he asked, and she nodded. He swallowed and walked out of the room, a strange look on his face.

"Where's he going?" Haru asked, and Katara shook her head.

"I don't... I don't know, he barely ever leaves the Infirmary..."

* * *

><p>Toph was tinkering with the engine. Not because it needed tinkering, but because the word <em>Reavers<em> sent chills of horror spiking through her body and she had to do something or else she'd go completely bonkers. That was one of the problems about being in the black - she couldn't feel other ships, she didn't know who (or what) else might be waiting out there.

Reavers _scared_ Toph, in a way that nothing else did. They were men - she'd felt them moving on distant towns and screamed for the crew to leave _stat_ a few times before, and they had heartbeats and two feet and two arms and a head and a torso - but they were, at the same time, completely and utterly _removed_ from humanity. The things they _did_ to people, the mangled bodies they left behind, the empty, blood-splattered streets and upturned lives at the towns, the way she could feel all the people's things tossed aside and tripped over and trampled through in their haste to escape - it all turned her blood to ice and wound her stomach in anxious knots.

So she was tinkering.

"Toph," a voice said, and she tilted her head. It was the Avatar - no, wait, his name was Aang, Katara had told her - standing at the door to the engine room.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, too fast for him to understand. He was still in the early stages of learning the language.

"Toph," he repeated fervently, and walked over, touching her cheek. She tried not to recoil. "Danger. Benders."

"How do you know that?" she asked, and, this close, she could feel him furrow his brow like he was trying to decipher her question.

"See - earth," he said, sounding frustrated. "You - bend - earth," he managed to say, and then huffed angrily. It couldn't be fun, she thought, feeling his heart pounding in his chest with his annoyance, to know things but be unable to communicate them. She nodded, even though she didn't know how he could possibly have known that about her unless he'd been talking to Iroh.

"Yes," she replied slowly. "Yes, I bend earth." It still sounded strange. She felt him smile - she liked being in contact with people, it gave her a chance to actually see them - and then it hit her that that was why he was touching her face. He had realized, or been told, that she saw through touch, and was showing her his expressions. She gaped at him.

He wanted her to trust him, so he was giving her the chance to see him completely.

"Katara - " he said, and then bit his lip. With his other hand, he mimed drinking, and then huffed again. "_Koi_," he said suddenly, and Toph was confused. Katara was a type of fish? "_Saan._" He growled, then mimed drinking again.

"Water?" she asked, "Katara - Katara bends water?"

She felt him brighten and nod. "Katara - water bend."

"I didn't - how did you know that?" she asked, reaching up and taking his small hand. She felt his heart pounding, and then he tugged on it and pulled her through the ship. "Where are we going? Aang - uh, crap, what was - _bindouh?_" she asked, and she felt him turn.

"Wait," he said. "Come."

He pulled her through the near silent ship until they reached the passenger dorms, and opened Iroh's door. "Hello," Iroh said evenly, seemingly unfazed by the Reavers. "Aang, is something wrong?"

Aang nodded, and then pointed at Toph. "Toph, earth," he said, and then pointed to Iroh, "fire," and then he pointed in the vague direction of the Infirmary, "Katara, water." He pointed at himself then, and mimed flying.

"Air?" Toph asked, finally picking up on Aang's plan. Aang was gathering the benders together so they could put up a fight against the Reavers. "Kid, you're smarter than you look... Grandpa, don't you see?" she asked, laughing a little out of nerves. "He's putting together a fighting force to protect the ship."

"That's a good idea, Aang," Iroh said, and Toph felt him smile through the hand she was still holding.

* * *

><p>Jet stared at the ship as it passed in the distance, and it didn't seem to be coming for them. After a long, tense moment, Longshot said, "They aren't chasing," and he sighed in relief.<p>

"We're clear," he said into the intercom, and he could almost feel the palpable relief fall over his ship. He hung up the microphone and glanced at the window. "For now," he added, to Bee and Longshot. "They might get hungry again."

"You think they'll follow us, sir?"

"Beaumonde is well-defended," Longshot said, "but they might wait for us."

"That's a lot of trouble for one meal," Bee mused, but Jet shook his head.

"They don't hunt for food, they hunt for sport," he explained, agitated, still watching the distant ship warily. "If they think we'd be fun to chase, they'll attack us."

"So, what's our plan, sir?" Bee asked, crossing her arms, and he took a deep breath.

"For now, nothing. I'll tell Mai to keep the - the morphine," he said, a little uncomfortable with the thought. It was morbid, but necessary; he just didn't like to think about that possibility. "Just in case they come back. I'll also tell Toph to get her Big Bertha and Maria Mark Three ready," he continued, pacing a little. "We can set those up in the cargo bay and make a barricade, so in case they board us..."

"We'll have some cover and a place to shoot from," Bee inferred for him, and then shook her head. "Sir, that's dangerous - such heavy artillery in the black? Won't that depressurize the ship?"

"Might," he conceded, "but if me and Pipsqueak are manning the weapons, we can wear suits in case that happens. The rest of you can be sealed in the main body of the ship."

"But that's suicide, sir," Bee said, standing up and looking him straight in the eye. "For you and Pipsqueak."

"Keeps the rest of you safe, don't it?" he replied, challenging her. "Bee, I don't like the thought anymore than you do, but - " he hesitated; this was difficult, facing down the one person who knew all of his deepest, darkest secrets " - but I protect my own," he said finally, voice soft. "And I will _die_ to do that, if I must."

She sobered at that, and glanced at Longshot. "One concession," she said quietly.

"What is that?"

"Don't do that to Pipsqueak," she said firmly. "You go down that path, I will be by your side."

"Bee - " Longshot said suddenly, and Jet shook his head.

"Bee, I won't - "

"With all due respect, sir," she snapped, in full Military Mode. "This is my decision," she told both of them. Jet blinked hard - he'd almost forgotten, in the years since the war, how _loyal_ Bee was in the face of dangers that would make the most daring man turn tail and run. "I've followed you this far, Jet," she continued sincerely. "I'm not about to leave you now."

He looked at Longshot, whose face was closed off from him, and then to Bee, whose eyes were steel-hard, and nodded. "All right."

* * *

><p>"Longshot," she croaked, but he wouldn't look at her, simply keying in a few coordinates and staring hard at the console. "I have to do this."<p>

"It's fine," he replied tightly. "I'm just the husband, don't mind me."

She swallowed hard. Oh, why was her life always so complicated? Couldn't they understand that she loved _both_ her husband and her Captain? She would never cheat on Longshot, never dream of kissing another man, she loved him so much it _hurt_, but what she felt for Jet could only be considered a form of love, the kind of bond that formed over years of shared suffering and loyalty. Jet understood, but Longshot hadn't been to war, he'd been a supply pilot, refusing to get involved with the killing of people.

She loved that about him, that he was still unmarred by the scars that still crisscrossed her heart - but she wished, now, that he had some kind of experience with the bonds forged in the fires of war, so he could understand why she could love him desperately and still be willing to die with Jet.

"Longshot - " she said, and then lower, "Marcus," the name only _she_ knew he still held close to his heart like a talisman. He was named for his father, his father who was taken by Reavers, holding off a whole crew of them to give his son time to take to the skies and flee in desperation. Marcus was the name that Longshot had stopped going by when his father had been carved up by Reavers - he hadn't considered himself worthy of the name. She thought he was more than worthy enough, but she respected him enough to understand. "Please, understand. I love you, I _do_, that's why I have to do this. I _have_ to protect this ship - you, all of the people on it, you're all I've got."

He didn't answer, looking away from her for the longest moment, and then he stood up and began to walk away, leaving her empty at the console. He stopped at the door and glanced back at her. "My name is Longshot," he whispered, and then was gone.

Bee closed her eyes.


	14. Chapter Thirteen: Reunion

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter thirteen: <strong>reunion<strong>

_"Those who rely on luck never win the battle."_  
>-Worf, <em>Star Trek: the Next Generation<em>

(at the maidenhead bar in the city of xīnbei on beaumonde)

Sokka arrived at the Maidenhead well before Katara was due to arrive (Suki had snapped at him to stop fidgeting with that stupid nesting doll, dammit, but he couldn't _help_ it, this was his sister!) and was just settling in for a nice, relaxing glass of hard liquor when he spotted _her_.

"_Cào_," he muttered, and made his way over without a word to the other three sitting at his table. This was a score he had to settle on his own.

The woman was about as beautiful as they came - glittering white hair, sparkling blue eyes, and skin the color of cappuccino - and stole hearts like he stole cargo, without any difficulty or emotion. She was, he supposed, his arch-nemesis. "Hello," he said jovially, and she jumped - for a second, he thought he saw something genuine on her face - "Phoebe, was it?"

He knew it wasn't her real name, but it was the one she had given him when she'd seduced her way onto his ship, convinced him that she was just a poor, disaffected woman who had been all-but _sold_ to him, and then worn some kind of drugged lipstick so that when he finally caved in to his pleading libido, he'd immediately fallen flat on his face. Luckily, he'd woken up before her allies had been able to kill him and pick apart his ship, but the betrayal still stung.

"Oh, _darling_," she trilled lightly, "I was wondering where you'd gotten off to. How have you been?"

"No," he replied gruffly, both to her and himself.

"No?" she asked, raising a perfect white eyebrow. "You haven't been?"

"No, as in, no, you're not about to play me again. So, Phoebe, if that is your name," which it wasn't, "mind telling me where you took my belongings when you tried to kill me?"

"Darling, I don't know what you're talking about," she lied smoothly, linking an arm with him and pulling him away from the guys she had been preparing to con, "all I did was kiss you."

"Do you ever stop lying?" he asked, exasperated, and she laughed, like the tinkling of bells. A tiny part of him wanted to whimper.

"To men? _Never_," she replied cheerfully. "One pan-galactic," she told the bartender, "on my boyfriend here."

He shook his head at the bartender, who nodded discreetly and got the drink anyway. Good man. "A pan-galactic gargle blaster?" he asked her, quirking an eyebrow. "A bit strong for a little thing like you, don't you think?"

She beamed at him. "Oh, Sokka, I think we're past the lying stage of our relationship, don't you? You know I've got the alcohol tolerance of a man twice my size."

"Past the lying stage, huh?" he asked, crossing his arms. "So, what's your real name?"

"Sokka, sweetheart, it's Phoebe, don't you know?"

"Ceridwen - " a voice said, and she winced a little. The bartender was holding her drink, a scary-looking electric green thing, his eyes dancing with amusement. "Your drink."

"Thanks, Paolo," she replied brightly, and turned back to Sokka, shrugging. "What? You know I'm a liar."

"Your complete lack of conscience never fails to boggle my mind, Ceridoebe."

"Was that a mish-mash of the two names I've had around you?" she asked, and laughed outright. "Oh, that's _adorable_. I'll have to remember that - what was it, Ceridoebe?" She sipped her drink and punched him lightly on the arm - far lighter than she could, he knew (he'd been on the receiving end of that punch the last time he'd seen her, getting his escape pod back from her slimy clutches) - and smiled beatifically at him. "You're a smart one, Sokka, don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. I like you, really." She leaned forward, and he could smell her perfume, almost like a candy, and he bit back a groan. "You're a remarkable man."

"Hey, Casanova," someone said, and he turned to see Suki, scowling at him (and, he noted with a little hope, at Phoebe). "Our friends are here."

"Watch out for her," another person said, coming up behind Suki, and they all turned. Phoebe grinned brilliantly.

"Jet! How wonderful to see you! I've missed you _so - _Sokka, where are you going?"

"To see more important people," he grumbled, pushing through the crowded bar to reach the crew that had arrived with Jet. He spotted her - dark skin, wild dark hair, blue dress - and broke out into a run, bowling over a woman dancing with an oversized fan as he went. "Katara!" he cried, and flew into a tackling hug. She laughed and returned it with as much force.

"Sokka, I - oh, _Sokka,_" she said, and it was the best sound in the world.

* * *

><p>"So, Diana," Jet said, leaning on the bar, "how've you been?"<p>

"Oh, wonderful," she replied cheerfully. "Just perfect. Between you and Sokka, I have to say, this is probably the best day of my life!"

"You're full of shit," he growled, and turned to the laughing bartender. "Can I get something? Stiff, preferably? I've had a _really_ bad week, and it's just getting worse."

"I'll get you the stiffest drink we've got," the bartender replied, and set about to making it. Diana lounged on a barstool, looking for all the world like some ancient goddess. She was so damn beautiful it was sickening.

"That's going to be this one," she offered, indicating to her crazy-looking neon green drink. "It's the pan-galactic. You don't even taste the alcohol," she added, smiling, and took a dainty sip.

"I'm sure it sneaks up on you," he said lightly, "and then beats you on the head with a brick."

"Oh, you're _still_ on about that?" she asked admonishingly, like she had done something small like lose his keys. "I have to say, you're the only man who's ever resisted me so completely. I had to resort to desperate measures. You understand, don't you?" she pleaded, wide blue eyes locked on his. "Please, Jet? You know how I hate having people angry at me."

"Only because you kill most of 'em before they can get mad."

She shrugged. "I still don't like it."

"I don't know who you are," Sokka's friend, who had stayed even after he'd left, said, "but I _really_ want to punch you in the face." Jet brightened.

"Please, do it! I would pay you, um," he started, rifling through his pockets until he had a few credits in-hand, "seventeen credits, if you do."

"Seriously?" she asked, and he almost burst out laughing. Oh, he hoped Sokka was stupid enough to have let this girl slip through his fingers. He had no problem picking her up, if that was the case. She looked from the money to Diana, who was sipping her drink and smiling like she just _knew_ the girl wouldn't do it. The smile must have been the last straw, because she snatched the money from Jet's hand and belted Diana, straight across the cheekbone, so hard that she fell off her stool.

"You - why did you do that?" Diana cried, clutching her cheek, eyes murderous. The girl shrugged.

"He paid me to, and you're a bitch. Do I need a better reason?"

Jet beamed at her. "I _like_ you," he said brightly, and took his drink from the laughing bartender.

* * *

><p>"Did Suki just punch someone?" Katara asked, and Sokka turned, seemed to recognize what was happening, and burst out laughing. "Sokka!"<p>

"No, no," he said, "trust me, she deserved it."

"I'm going to get a drink," Mai muttered, and then slipped through the crowd to join Jet at the bar.

"I've got a table," Sokka offered, slinging an arm around her shoulders like he didn't want to lose contact with her - and, if she was being honest, she didn't want him to - and guiding her towards a little alcove. Bee, Haru, and Toph followed her. She didn't know why Longshot had volunteered to stay on the ship with Iroh and Aang (the former was helping her teach the Avatar English), but, judging by the stormy look on Bee's face, it was bad. When she got to the table - upon which was sitting her matryoshka doll, the one that Sokka had showed her - another surprise greeted her.

"Zuko!" she cried, and pulled him into a tight hug. He held her a little _too_ tight for propriety, and buried his face in her hair. She should have cared about what people were thinking, but all she could think was _he's safe_.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, "I'm so sorry."

She pulled away, smiling, and shook her head. "There's nothing to apologize for. We're all safe, that's the important thing."

"Speak for yourself," Bee grumbled, sliding into the booth next to the bouncing Ty Lee. "I got shot."

"You got - " Zuko started, and seemed genuinely _concerned_, "I'm sorry, I'll - I'll make sure you're compensated."

She shrugged it off. "Eh, it was about time for it. Besides, it didn't have anything to do with Katara," she added as an afterthought.

"Then, why did you get shot?" Ty Lee asked, leaning on the table and blinking at Bee several times. Bee, Katara noted, looked distinctly uncomfortable with the attention.

"Oh, turns out we had an Alliance plant on-board," she replied, shifting away from Ty Lee. "He shot me in the fight." She shrugged again. "Seriously, it's nothing compared to some of the injuries Jet's had."

Sokka tapped his chin. "Jet, he's your captain?"

"Yes," Bee replied, confused.

"How does he know Ceridoebe over there?" he asked, jerking his thumb toward the bar. Bee looked over and then scowled.

"You mean Diana?"

"Diana," Sokka said, like this was a revelation. "Ceri_dian_oebe, then." When everyone stared at him, he sighed. "She lies about her name. She told me her name was Phoebe, but the bartender called her Ceridwen, and then you just called her Diana. I just smushed all the names together and, well..."

"You know her?" Toph asked, arms crossed. "She's a bitch."

"I concur," Suki said, holding an icepack up to her cheek and sliding into the booth next to Katara. "Hey, Katara, it's good to see you."

"Suki - " she started, but she waved a hand.

"I kinda had it coming," she explained, shrugging. "So, how've you been?"

"Um, all right, mostly," Katara said, wincing. "That looks like it hurt, are you sure you're all right?"

"Yeah, yeah," Suki replied, waving it off, "she just packed a harder punch than I expected. How's Mai's ship been treating you?"

"I feel like I should say that it's Jet's ship," Toph said, poking the menu like it owed her something, "but I kind of think it's more accurate to call it Mai's. Hey, you, can you read me the food on this thing?" she asked, shoving her menu in Sokka's face. He jumped back, but otherwise seemed unaffected by Toph's brusque manner.

"Um, pretty well, mostly," Katara replied, "How is Sokka's ship?"

"Cramped," Ty Lee and Zuko said at the same time (Suki snickered).

"Well," Sokka snapped, turning away from Toph, "it's meant for one person. I didn't plan to have three people jump on-board at Sihnon."

"Hey, hey," Toph said, snapping her fingers and pointing to the menu, "you were in the middle of something."

Katara smiled, oddly warm inside.

* * *

><p>Haru watched the group chat, Toph arguing with the other captain about whether or not this meal was better than that one, and felt surprisingly... melancholy. He'd expected to be ready to get home by the time he'd gotten to Beaumonde, but he rather liked the Firefly's strange crew (and their abrasive mechanic) much more than he'd thought he would. There was something about them, the way they interacted and communicated and worked together, that he'd never been able to get at the hospital on Persephone. They were a <em>family<em>.

At the hospital, he'd been a bit of a loner - he'd earned his position as one of the top surgeons through nothing more than hard work and talent. Unlike most of the people he'd worked with there, he wasn't born into money or status; he was born the second son of a second son, last in a long line of nobody thieves and robbers, with no future to speak of. At a young age, he'd decide to leave that to the birds and go seek out his own future, which had led him to Persephone, which boasted the most open medical school in the Core, and he'd worked himself almost sick to earn a scholarship there, but when he had that scholarship - and now, when he'd earned his place as a top-tier surgeon - he'd found it lacked _something._

He loved his job, and he loved helping people, but he always felt alone. Here, though... he didn't feel alone. Toph was always up to something in the engine room (usually something dangerous) and he was always welcome at the constant poker game in the dining room and Mai had a wealth of knowledge about anatomy that frankly terrified him (considering her affinity with knives) and Katara or Iroh and Aang were always lounging near the Infirmary, learning languages (and they were always open to help) and... he just _liked_ the place.

In the week he'd been aboard _Freedom_, it had almost begun to feel like home, in spite of, well, everything. He'd spent years trying to make Persephone home, but it had never clicked with him, and yet this transport ship had just reached up and grabbed his heart.

Haru didn't want to go back to Persephone.

"What's up with the giant fans?" Ty Lee asked, peering at the dancing girls that were moving sporadically through the bar. "Are they there for really, really hot days, or what?"

"I think they're just walking decoration," Katara replied, but she looked concerned about something.

"Everything all right?" he asked. In the past week, he'd gotten to know Katara rather well, and he knew that she tended to worry about nothing. Still, there shouldn't have been any reason for worry here. They were just meeting up with her brother and his crew.

"I... maybe," she mumbled, and then leaned over and asked Zuko something. He turned, and then blanched.

"We have a problem," he said in a low voice, "Admiral Zhao is here."

Sokka and Katara were both very, very still. He felt Toph tap the floor beside his foot, and she winced. "He's got lots of friends, too," she muttered. "Someone get Jet and Mai away from the Bitch Queen."

Bee picked up the menu and said, loudly, "I'm gonna get drinks. Anyone want anything?"

"Yeah," Toph answered quickly, "I want the - crap, what was it, um..."

"The chicken wings," Sokka said, rolling his eyes, obviously trying to avoid looking over at Zhao. "She wants the honey chicken wings."

"No that wasn't - ow!" she cursed under her breath as both Haru and Sokka kicked her under the table. "Sheesh, fine, the honey chicken wings. Jerks," she muttered, scowling. He snickered, and she punched him in the shoulder. Bee sauntered nonchalantly over to where Jet and Mai were arguing over something at the bar.

"Toph," Katara said sharply, "this isn't the time for that."

"Speak for yourself," she snapped, "it's not like I have any grudges against the Admiral."

"Except for the fact that you helped break into a prison," she replied, arms crossed, "and kidnapped a doctor from Persephone."

"Hey, he chose to come help us," Toph countered, crossing her arms as well. "I wasn't gonna let Jet hurt anyone, jeez. He could've stayed at Persephone and doctored the hell out of the Core if he'd wanted to, right?" she asked him and he nodded.

"Sure. Like I said," he added, "I've been wanting a vacation."

"Yeah, well," Jet said, joining them at the table, "you're gonna keep wanting one. We gotta move before the Admiral tries to - "

"Captain Jonathan Reynolds," a voice said, and Jet scowled (for some reason, pure, evil _vindication_ crossed over Mai's face). Admiral Zhao was standing behind them, arms behind his back. "And Prince Zuko, how nice to meet all of you."

"And to what do I owe this rare pleasure?" Jet asked, turning and lounging casually against the table. Bee slipped into the booth (pushing Ty Lee into Suki as she did) and, in one movement, set down a plate of chicken wings and took Jet's pistol from his belt and held it on the table, hidden from Zhao by Jet's body.

"You have cargo," Zhao began, and Jet cut him off.

"Well, yeah, I captain a transport ship, so I usually do have cargo."

Zhao scowled. "Stolen cargo," the Admiral snapped, "that the Fire Lord wants back."

Jet glanced at Bee, and Haru could see a string of curses in one single glance. Zhao was after Aang - who was nearly undefended on the ship with Iroh and Longshot. They would have to somehow dodge Zhao and all of his men, and then race back to the ship to protect the Avatar. "Can't say I know what you're talking about," Jet replied, arms crossed. Behind Zhao, Mai slipped through the crowd and left the bar. At least Longshot would have forewarning, Haru thought.

"I think you do," Zhao said, slamming a hand on the table and disrupting Toph, who was eating the chicken wings, apparently without a care in the world. She frowned, and then muttered something under her breath that sounded worryingly like _fuck this noise_, and then stomped her foot.

The ground between Zhao's feet leaped up and hit him square in the crotch. Everyone reacted at the exact same moment - Jet lunged forward and knocked Zhao over, landing a kick to his stomach and diving over him, while the whole crew moved almost as one to vacate the booth. Several men came forward to stop them, but Toph (still clutching the half-eaten plate of chicken wings) stomped her feet again, shooting the Alliance men a grin sticky with honey sauce as they were suddenly encased in the flooring.

"Okay, Toph, that was pretty awesome," Jet conceded, as they all ran for the door and through the streets to get to the ship.

"Mm-hmm," she replied, voice muffled by food. Running beside her, Sokka grabbed a few pieces of chicken and stuffed them in his mouth as well. Katara let out a frustrated yell.

"You two - !"

* * *

><p>(on <em>freedom<em>)

Iroh knew there was a problem long before Mai showed up - because Aang knew there was trouble. The boy had been meditating, no doubt in the spirit world talking to the previous Avatar, when he'd suddenly jerked awake and gasped, "Trouble," to Iroh. If the spirits had thrown him from the spirit world so suddenly, then there _must_ be a problem.

Together, they ran to the cargo bay, in time to see the Alliance men trying to sneak in. Aang bit his lip and looked at Iroh, but neither of them were armed. He did something strange with his hands, like he was hoping a staff might appear, and he looked around hastily, before he landed on a piece of rebar that had been laying around since before Iroh had arrived there. He picked it up, hit it against the ground a couple of times, and then nodded.

The sound had alerted the Alliance men, but they were ready. Aang twirled the staff in his fingers like a pinwheel, and a gust of wind knocked most of the men off their feet. One of the ones who was still standing lunged for Aang, but Iroh was there with a sharp punch of fire that startled all of them.

The only firebenders who remained were the royal family of the Fire Nation - they were the _only_ people left in the 'Verse who still knew any bending katas, and Iroh was a master to rival the power of the ancients. Between him and the Avatar, the Alliance men never stood a chance. He didn't even have to kill them: after the second fireburst, they dropped their weapons and ran, completely thrown off-guard by the man wielding flames and the boy shooting powerful gusts of wind at them.

Bending was, as far as they knew, a long-dead art.

"More will come," Iroh said, both because he knew the Alliance and because the spirits wouldn't have alerted Aang over such a small group of people.

Mai arrived then, and looked critically at both of them. "Zhao," she said shortly, "I suppose you already knew that."

"I knew they were Alliance," Iroh replied, and laid a hand on Aang's shoulder, "but I only suspected Zhao's involvement. This complicates matters."

"Not really," Mai said, folding her hands into her sleeves and making for her shuttle, no doubt to arm herself. "It just means we have to run a little faster than usual."

"My Lady, it does not do to underestimate Admiral Zhao."

"And you shouldn't underestimate Jet," she replied, and disappeared into her shuttle.

Aang looked at him, brow furrowed. "Alliance?" he asked, and Iroh nodded. Aang was picking up the language fast, but he was still only a beginner. "We fight?"

"I hope not," Iroh muttered, and looked at Aang, then shrugged. "Maybe," he replied.

Jet arrived soon after Mai, followed by Bee, Katara, Haru, Toph, and then three unfamiliar people (one of whom was sharing a plate of what might have been chicken with Toph), and then - "Prince Zuko!" he cried. His nephew stopped in surprise, and then a rare smile split his face.

"Uncle!" he said, and came forward to hug him tightly.

"He's your _uncle?_" Toph asked, and Jet hit her on the back of the head.

"We'll deal with that later, get her ready to fly. Longshot," he barked into the communicator while simultaneously pressing the buttons that closed the cargo bay doors. "We gotta run. Everyone's on board."

"Wait, I have a - " one of the strangers - who looked remarkably similar to Lady Katara - started, and then sighed as the doors closed and the ship began to rumble. "Well, there wasn't much on it anyway."

"Your ship?" Zuko asked, and then winced. "I don't think we can go back for it..."

"Not with Zhao on our asses, we can't," Jet replied, scowling. "What we need is _allies..._"

"We could go to Haven?" Toph suggested, licking her fingers (Haru, Iroh noticed, was staring at her with a hunger on his face that had nothing to do with food). "The Shepherd's got lots of anti-Reaver technology, and he'd let us crash there."

Jet crossed his arms. "That's awful far," he muttered. "And we've got that Reaver ship lurking out there, I don't know if it's a good idea to go to Haven with those guys waiting in the wings. Maybe we could..." he trailed off, deep in thought.

"St. Albans," Sokka said suddenly, and Jet looked at him. "My father is there. If you say we're fighting off the Alliance, he'll bring out all the big guns he has - which is a lot, unless something huge has changed since I was there last."

"Zhao knows St. Albans, though," Katara said fervently, walking forward and laying a hand on Sokka's shoulder. "He'll know how to use the terrain to his advantage."

"Yeah, well, so does Dad. It's not far, and we'll have allies there - plus, they've got anti-Reaver weapons, too."

"Then it's decided," Jet said. "We go to St. Albans."

* * *

><p>(on <em>prospero<em>)

"They're heading for St. Albans - Water Tribe territory," the navigator said, mockery light in his tone. It was too subtle for Zhao to call him on it, though, so he made do with a scowl, and clutched the icepack tighter to his nether regions.

Who knew they had an earthbender on their crew? He'd thought the last earthbender had died with Mad Bumi in the war. Well, now he knew - they had an earthbender, a waterbender, and, if his terrified (and demoted) men were anything to go by, they also had at least one firebender (although he wasn't certain that the prince was a bender), and the awoken Avatar. The last one spelled _serious_ trouble - not just for the Alliance, but for Zhao himself. He was supposed to return to Sihnon with a box that contained the still-sleeping Avatar, not the awoken powerhouse himself.

Plus, his men claimed that the Avatar was a large, deadly-looking man with wicked tattoos - facing him was not a fun prospect. And now they were making for Water Tribe territory, where he had reports of Independent factions still fighting the long-lost war, and not to mention enough ice to cover the rest of the 'Verse in a layer three feet deep - which would be useful to the Avatar and the water witch.

_Damn_, he thought - it was over two thousand years since the last bastion of benders had fallen, and while there had been the occasional few who showed the talent, they hadn't gathered in anything like a force, nor had they ever been trained or talented. It seemed that something of the ancient art had survived underneath the Alliance's eyes, and it was up to Zhao to crush this small rebellion under his heel, show them proper Alliance civilization.

By force, if necessary.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note<strong>: I haven't been doing many of these, but I feel like a development in this chapter requires a bit of explanation. Several of the Avatar characters I chose to play the parts of various _Firefly_ characters were chosen as deliberate foils to their counterpart - the most notable is Toph in the Kaylee position - and this is one of those situations. I chose the Avatar character that is _least_ like Saffron to play her, mostly because it made for an interesting challenge. Right here, she's more Saffron than Yue, but this isn't her only appearance; she is a major player in the next two books (I call her the Harbinger of Foreshadowing for a good reason), and we'll see more of her history and into her head, and gradually, the elements of Yue will appear beneath the callous surface.


	15. Chapter Fourteen: The Calm Before

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter fourteen: <strong>the calm before<strong>

_"You got all kinds o' learning and you made me look the fool without even trying, and yet here I am with a gun to your head. That's 'cause I've got people with me. People who trust each other, who do for each other, who ain't always looking for the advantage."_  
>-Malcolm Reynolds, <em>Firefly<em>

(on _freedom_)

Katara bit her lip nervously - as much as she had missed her icy home, she was afraid to return. She had left so suddenly, and for so long, and her father was... well, he wasn't going to be happy to hear that she had abandoned her roots and gone to Sihnon, especially not if he found out she was a Companion. Sokka already knew and while he wasn't cheerful over it, he wasn't chewing her out (yet) and seemed too happy to have found her to worry about what she was doing before. He had told her he would explain it all to Father before they arrived, so he wouldn't be shocked over it, but she doubted he would take it any better hearing it from Sokka.

She was _fussing_, she knew, and fidgeting with the clothes she'd borrowed from Mai (she'd have to buy new clothes when she got a chance - but when, and with what money?) and Suki would tell her she was being a worrywart and to stop, but Suki was asleep in one of the passenger dorms of the now-crowded ship and couldn't smack some sense into her.

Someone else found her, though, in the alcove off the dining room - Zuko. "Hey," he said seriously, sitting on the seat opposite her. She smiled wanly.

"You don't have to be so formal," she chided. "I've told you that a thousand times."

He laughed a little at this, but she suspected it was insincere. He looked up at her with pleading eyes. "I really am sorry for this - I shouldn't have," he ran a hand through his hair, "well, a lot of things, I shouldn't have... I'm sorry, that's what I'm trying to say."

"I meant it when I said it was all right," she said quietly. "My time on Sihnon was always going to be short," she added a little wistfully, and he looked at her curiously.

"What do you mean?"

She sighed. "It's... I always knew that Sihnon was a way station, somehow," she replied, biting her lip. "I always thought that fate was taking me in a different direction, that I wasn't _really_ meant to be a Companion. I think that's one reason I did," she said sadly, "I was trying to sidestep my destiny. Now, I'm starting to think that's impossible."

Zuko shook his head, "It's not," he murmured. "I don't believe in destiny," he said firmly, looking at her. "Besides, if you weren't a Companion, I never would have - " he started, but cut himself off before saying too much. She leaned forward and took his hand.

"I never said I regretted it," she said quietly. He stared at her hand for a long moment - her skin dark and smooth, his pale and calloused, and she wanted, painfully, for him to forgive himself. She knew how hard he was on himself, how unfair, the impossibly high standard he held himself to, and she didn't like it - Zuko saw only his own flaws, only his own mistakes. When he looked at himself, all he saw was a scar on his face and a host of missteps and bad memories. She wanted him to see what _she_ saw: a proud, strong, but fundamentally _good_ man who was on his way to doing a lot of incredible things for the 'Verse.

She just wished she knew how to convince him.

"Will you go back to the Companion's lifestyle," he asked, "when this is over?"

She hesitated - part of her wanted to, but part of her thought that her time at the Companion House was a chapter now closed, a stepping-stone to another future. But that thought scared her; being a Companion was easy, and familiar - could she really give that up for the unknown?

She looked into Zuko's searching gold eyes and thought that maybe, just maybe, she could. "I don't know," she replied, and he smiled shortly.

"Why did you..." he started, and then took a deep breath, "why did you really leave your home?" For some reason, it felt more intimate than even his previous question - possibly because it was about her locked-up past, something he knew she kept hidden deep within, and for good reasons. Sharing that _was_ more intimate.

"I..." she said, and she almost lied, but at the last moment, found herself telling the truth, "I'm a waterbender," she whispered. "When I was a child, in the war, Zhao attacked the Water Tribes because... he'd heard there was a bender among them, somewhere. I was so young, I didn't know - it had never occurred to me that it might be dangerous. My mother, she... she knew. My dad didn't, and my brother... still doesn't, but she had - she had a waterbending scroll that had been passed down in her family since the Age of Bending and she showed me a few of the moves, and she was _so proud_ that her daughter was a..." She took a deep breath and swallowed hard, clutching Zuko's hand without really thinking.

"Zhao's men stormed our town, calling for the freak to come out - " his hand squeezed hers tighter " - and my mother, she was holding me and I was crying and she just said, _I'll make it all okay_, and then she went out to Zhao and - just - she told him that she was the bender. She died for me - because I was - I _am_ - unnatural," she choked, blinking back tears. "A _freak_."

"You're no freak," Zuko snapped, holding her hand tightly, "don't _ever_ say that."

Trust Zuko to get angry at such a thing.

"And bending - it isn't unnatural," he said, and moved to the seat beside her, running his free hand through her hair. "If it helps, my uncle and I are both benders," he said softly. She looked at him, vision blurry, and he nodded. "It runs in the royal family. I - I've been trained. I can - I don't know how waterbending works, but I can teach you some of the katas I know, it might - if you want," he said hastily. She watched him carefully; for so long, her power had been anathema to her, but now with Zuko telling her that he had it too, and with the way Jet's crew hadn't even flinched, hadn't asked any questions, and with Toph showing off her bending, and the Avatar playing with air marbles... maybe she wasn't such a freak, after all.

Or if she was, then at least she was in good company.

"I'd like that," she replied, and kissed him hard.

* * *

><p>"How do you plan to deal with Zhao?" Bee asked, and he wanted so badly to scowl, to lash out, to ask her how the hell he was supposed to know, but then - that was why she was asking. Bee was the sort who <em>demanded<em>, who never took _I don't know_ for an answer. Years ago, when the war was almost lost and he thought he was going to die in the dust and the rot of Serenity Valley, she had looked him in the face and asked him if he was really so weak - and he'd gotten up and kept fighting because no, Bee, he wasn't that weak.

"Reavers," he replied, the first thing that popped into his head. He didn't have to look at her to know she was raising an eyebrow. "Stop that," he said, cutting her off before she could comment, "it's an actual idea. That Reaver ship is on us, isn't it?" he asked, and she sighed.

"Longshot says it seems like it," she answered curtly. Things between the couple had been... strained, to say the least, since Bee had vocally decided to die with him if need be.

"We can outfly a Reaver ship in a short sprint, can't we? If we go hard burn," he answered his own question, and leaned against the wall in the hallway they were in. "And Reavers hunt for sport - they'll chase us if we run. Zhao's on our tail, so we bring the Reavers in as well - they'll fight each other while we disappear into St. Albans."

"That's... cruel," Bee said slowly, and Jet shook his head.

"No, they'll meet before we even hit atmo, if we time it right," he replied, clicking his tongue. "They'll face each other in the air. Zhao's ship will probably win, but they'll take heavy casualties and have to land, so we can meet him with force on foot, where he won't have his big guns. We, however, have Toph, and whatever weapons the Water Tribe has - it's as even a match as we can hope for. And the best part is," he added, grinning, "it's probably going to happen whether we do shit about it or not."

"I suppose," Bee muttered, "and it is better than risking the Reavers boarding us."

"Yeah, so you can go make up with your husband," he snapped. When the two of them were fighting (which wasn't often), the whole ship felt _off_, and there was so much _tension_. Before she had a chance to retort, he stalked away, and almost ran into Mai. "Ambassador, good to see you out of hiding," he said jovially, and she rolled her eyes.

"I need water for tea," she replied. "For some reason, the Avatar is panicking and either couldn't find Katara or suddenly went insane, because he came to _me_ for guidance."

"Has he taken any blows to the head lately?" Jet asked, acting like he was seriously contemplating the possibility. Mai scowled.

"You weren't supposed to agree with me."

"No, no, we might be on to something here," he said innocently. "Maybe if we hit him again, he'll suddenly regain the power of proper speech."

"You're an asshole," she growled.

"And you're a whore, I think we're even."

"You know, I was wondering if you'd suddenly grown a civil tongue, it's been a while since you called me that."

"See, that's the Mai I know," he replied, grinning hugely. "Since when do you deign to curse?"

"You've corrupted me, what can I say?" she sighed, as she filled her tea kettle with water from the tap. He followed her back to her shuttle. "Do you want tea?"

"Maybe," he answered, but she stopped at the threshold.

"What is it?" she asked seriously. "You're agitated."

Just like Mai - blunt, to the point, and strikingly intuitive. "Zhao's got a whole lotta men on our tail, plus Reavers," he said, and she nodded.

"I've got the morphine - I'll have to add more for our new fugitives."

"That's not it," he replied sincerely. "I - ladies have no place in war," he said, changing tack smoothly from what he was going to say - _wanted_ to say (_I don't want you to be in danger here_). "You and Katara, might be best if you stay on the ship."

"Oh?" she challenged, so calm in the face of a very real threat. "And you think that you won't need a waterbender or an expert knife thrower? You have _so many_ people and so many options that you can afford to let us sit this one out?"

"That's not what I - " he started, and Mai stepped forward, eye-to-eye with him.

"Then what did you mean?" she asked softly, and he stared straight into her eyes. They were almost golden, he thought, like Iroh's and Zuko's - one of these days, he'd have to figure out her story, where she came from and why she'd become a Companion and why she'd joined up with him. One of these days.

"I just think it's better if you stay out of this," he replied, and something in her eyes shifted.

"And I think it's better if we fight," she said coldly, and then walked away without a sound. Jet fell against the wall, sighing.

* * *

><p>"Knock knock," Suki said, and opened the door. Sokka was sprawled out on the bed, wide awake, fidgeting with one of those little stress balls that Ty Lee kept trying to get her to use. "Couldn't sleep either?"<p>

"No," he replied, sitting up. "Nerves."

"How long has it been since you've been home?" she asked, sitting on the bed next to him. She was nervous, too, for a multitude of reasons - at this moment, though, it was because of - certain things. Sokka-related things. But now that she was here, she couldn't stop thinking about how dumb this was, how she had a million other things to do, how he was probably going to shove her away and scream in horror. She just - he was so sweet, and funny, and so what if he was a bundle of awkwardness? It was _cute_. She liked Sokka, a little too much for her own good.

"A few years. My Dad and I... we had a fight," he said, and then ran a hand through his hair. "Well, you were there when I was talking to Katara about it. He thought I was giving up the war - and he was right! He just... doesn't get it," he added mournfully. "You'll understand when you get there."

"Not worried at all about Zhao?" she asked lightly, trying not to burst out into hysterical laughter (that would surely clue him in to the less-than-innocent reason she was here). Sokka bit his lip.

"Some," he replied soberly. "He and I... I'm probably going to enjoy this fight a little too much," he said, quirking a little smile at her that made her heart flutter. "He killed my mother," he whispered then, and she felt sick for - all of this. What was she doing, trying to get laid? He was about to face his mother's murderer; he didn't need to be distracted by her and her stupid feelings!

"I'm sorry," she muttered, for so many things she wouldn't ever say. He sighed.

"It's all right," he said, "it... it was a long time ago."

"Still," she said softly, "for what it's worth, I am sorry."

He looked at her, eyes calculating. "You supported unification, didn't you? Sihnon was a major supporter of the Alliance."

"I'm not from Sihnon," she replied, shaking her head. "I come from Shadow, or, well, I did back when it was still a green rock." Her home planet still broke her heart when she thought about it - it had been beautiful, before the war, but the fighting had destroyed its delicate ecosystem and rendered the whole planet unlivable, a black rock, a wasteland that not even Reavers dared to touch. "I went to Sihnon because I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"You're an Independent?" he asked, sounding surprised, and she sighed.

"I was," she said, glancing at him, "now I'm just Suki."

"I like just Suki," he said quietly, smiling. Her heart leaped into her throat.

"Well, I should hope so," she replied, forcing herself to laugh like she wasn't in full-on _panic mode_. "I'm the only Suki you've got. Or, well, I've got - I mean, I've got me but you - we're - um, you've got me as a - " she spluttered, but he cut her off with a kiss.

* * *

><p>Aang was miserable, and he really thought it was dumb that he was because Katara was over a decade older than him, and he shouldn't be surprised to see her kissing another man, and well, she had a life that didn't revolve around him, didn't she?<p>

"Here," Mai said, handing him a cup of piping-hot tea. He was getting better at the language - Iroh's instruction had done wonders for him. Not that Katara wasn't helping him a lot - because she was - but Iroh was a natural teacher and he understood the things that Aang remembered better than Katara. For instance, she'd tried to show him a - what did she call it? - _computer_, and he still didn't know what it was. Iroh showed him _spirit_ and _fire_ and _bending_, things that Aang knew.

Iroh made him feel like his life hadn't changed as much as he thought it had.

He'd been to the spirit world several times since he'd woken up here, and had long conversations with Roku that had taught him so much more than he'd ever wanted to know. It wasn't so empty there as it had been - Roku (and Iroh, in the real world) said that the spirits were waking up, just like him, just like the Avatar Spirit, the world spirit. With their awakening, the worlds were shifting as well, aligning with their own souls (did each world have an Avatar, he wondered, but Iroh didn't know) and bending was rising within people.

It was, Aang realized, _healing._ His absence had cut deep grooves into the spirit world, and without the Avatar, it had begun to collapse. Now, it was repairing itself and reconnecting with reality - when he'd first gone there, it had been the ruins of the world he'd left behind; now, he could bounce between planets to find new, different things lurking behind each corner. The spirit world was growing and expanding to fit the real world.

It gave him _hope_ - the world was healing, and so could he. And even if Katara wasn't _with_ him (which he'd never expected her to be, it just hurt to know that she never _would_) she was still there for him and she still cared and he still wasn't _alone._

The first words she had ever said to him, when he'd woken up in the cargo bay scared and cold and disoriented, now rang familiar in his ears - at the time, they'd been gibberish, but now he knew what she'd been saying so fervently, so desperate for him to know, to understand: _you're not alone, it's all right, you're not alone_.

It was true then as it was now - he wasn't alone.

He figured he'd be all right, as long as he could always know that.

* * *

><p>"<em>Augh<em>," Toph cried, rolling over and trying to sleep, "_why_ is everyone having sex?"


	16. Chapter Fifteen: The Water Tribe

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter fifteen:<strong> the water tribe<strong>

"_I'm going to die without a shred of honor. And for the first time in my life, that really bothers me_."  
>-B'Ellana Torres, <em>Star Trek: Voyager<em>

(at the water tribe city of sarqaq on st. albans)

The Water Tribe was arguably better fortified in peacetime than it had ever been during the war - Chiefs Hakoda and Arnook were both paranoid to a fault, and had shored up the walls to the point that literally the only way in was through the sky, and even that would get you shot full of holes unless you had contacted one of the leaders beforehand. There was only one code to that cortex, and it was a close-kept secret.

On the other side of the world from the only Alliance outpost that had dared to set up after the war, the city waited. Sokka had contacted his father and warned him that they were coming, but hoped to keep their presence quiet - so they had landed _Freedom_ in a ravine about a half-mile from the city and were now trekking on foot.

Toph _loathed_ St. Albans already. It was cold, wet, and snowy almost uniformly across the whole planet (although Katara insisted that it was downright balmy near the equator, Toph was sure that meant "the snow actually melts at the equator") which meant that she had no choice but to wear shoes or else sit on the ship - alone, in the cold and dark - and her vision was blurry nearly to the point of total blindness through the layers of Bee's shoes and ice crunching underneath. She could feel the city, though, foundation dug deep deep _deep_ into the rock, resting heavy on the permafrost.

"Nayaafabaa," Sokka yelled into the wind. Someone on the turret leaned out and called out the same gibberish word in response.

After a long moment, someone opened the small stone door at the base of the turret - there was no gate to the city, and Sokka said this was the only way in or out - people didn't travel much, Toph supposed. A man stood in the doorway and peered at them, but nodded after a moment's discussion with Sokka.

"Pablan," the man said, and then shook his head. "Sorry," he said, laughing a little, "Welcome, friends, to the Water Tribe."

She heard Suki gasp beside her and, even through her blurry vision, she could tell that the city was a thing of beauty. Great channels had been cut into the permafrost, upon which a series of boats were moving, and further in, toward the center of the city, a large structure was situated. She could feel it stretching underneath the rock in a series of tunnels, straight to the gate, and wondered if they were really so paranoid that they had _secret escape tunnels_ from their homes - it seemed so.

It was like the war had never ended for the Water Tribe. They were still trapped in xenophobic terror.

"I am Hahn," the man said, shutting and bolting the door behind them. "I will take you to the main hall, where our chiefs will greet you. Do they know that you are here?" he asked.

"Yes," Sokka replied. "We need to get there as fast as we can, too, there's bad news."

"Oh?" Hahn asked, and then pointed to himself. "Chief Arnook has selected me as his successor, so I need to know."

Sokka growled. "Alliance, coming for us. We've got - something they want."

"Stolen?"

"Sort of," Sokka replied. "They stole it first, we just took it back." It wasn't the whole truth, but it was a functional lie. She felt Hahn clap Sokka on the back (he didn't seem pleased at this).

"Well, then, brother, we will help you fight this monster."

"You're not my brother," Sokka said flatly, and Hahn shrugged.

"Since you have left, Chief Hakoda has been like a father to me. We may as well be. Chief Arnook suggested that I marry your sister whenever she returns to us - and I see that she has," he added, grinning at Katara. Toph felt Zuko shift a little, and she smirked. Oh, _drama._ After they had put her through hell having to feel all the sex that she wasn't having last night, they could stand to have a bit of an upstart in the ring. "He supposes that it will help me prove to Chief Hakoda that I am worthy of the succession."

"Right," Sokka replied, and she felt Katara twitch.

"Hahn..." Katara mused, "I think I remember you." Her tone said that her memories were not good ones, and so did Hahn's cough when she brought it up.

"I assure you, my lady, that I have grown considerably since the last time we saw each other."

"Of course," she replied kindly, but Toph could hear a laugh in her voice.

They floated through the channels until they reached the sprawling central hut - she had thought at first that it might be a palace, but when she stepped on the icy ground, she found that it wasn't. It was built more like a coliseum than a palace, with a large central space surrounded by row after row of benches, filled with people all shouting various things. In the center of the meeting room stood a man, calm in the center of the storm. When they walked into the room, it fell into near-instantaneous silence.

"Katara!" someone yelled, and the man in the center of the room came running. Toph felt him run straight into Katara, and she could hear him mutter apologies to her and Sokka, _I love you_s and _why did you leave_. "Why did you leave?" he asked again, louder, pulling away from her, and she could practically hear Katara's apprehension. Sokka stepped in.

"Dad, we have bigger problems. Zhao is coming here."

"What?" the man she now recognized as Hakoda said. "You're sure?"

"Positive," Jet replied, shifting, and she knew by the way he twitched he was craving a cigarette - but he was, for about the seventeenth time, trying to quit. "We delayed him by sending a Reaver ship his way, but he's got more than enough firepower to blow them outta the sky."

"What kind of ship?" Hakoda asked, and Toph felt ripples pass through the people - the war they had been waiting for had finally shown back up at their doorsteps.

"Tower-class," Jet said, "dunno the make or any other details."

"Why?" someone else asked, joining them. Arnook? "Why here, and why now?"

Iroh coughed politely, and everyone turned to him. He had a hand on Aang's shoulder. "This, Chiefs Hakoda and Arnook, is the legendary Avatar. The Fire Nation has held him in suspended animation for three millennia, and they want him back. I, and my nephew, are opposed to this - " Toph wondered if Zuko had known he was opposed to it until just that moment " - and smuggled him out of the Alliance's hands."

"The Avatar," Hakoda whispered reverently. "He's just a boy."

"Yeah, surprised all of us, too," Toph said, already knowing where Hakoda was going - he wanted to use Aang to restart the war, and she wasn't having _any_ of that _fàng pì_. She believed in the cause, too, but there was a point where you just had to accept defeat, and Hakoda hadn't realized he'd been at that point for years - besides, Aang was just a kid, he didn't deserve to be treated like a bargaining chip. (Even though he already was.) "Look, I've got some anti-aircraft weaponry that'll make a new sun if I want 'em to, but they're back on the ship. Who wants to come get them with me?"

"How long do we have before Zhao arrives?" Arnook asked, and she (and Jet) shrugged.

"He was only a few hours behind us," Jet replied, and she felt _panic_ in the room threatening to break its restraints.

"You've brought the war upon us, Sokka," Arnook said accusingly. "We were living peacefully."

"Oh, don't even start that," Toph yelled, defensive of her new friend even if he and Suki had kept her up last night (along with Katara and Zuko, _and_ Bee and Longshot). "Look at this place! Either you're the most xenophobic _gou niáng yang de_ in the entire 'Verse, or you've been _waiting_ for this since the war ended - or did it even end, for you? You're still fighting the good fight, huh?"

"Independence is a cause worth dying for," Hakoda said tightly, and Toph scoffed.

"Yeah, except for your own people," she replied scathingly, and she heard several people draw in a sharp breath. "Your people you keep locked up behind tall walls and heavy artillery. Which, great, fine, I don't care, but you can't get _pissy_ with us 'cause we brought you the guy you've been itching to kill for eight years, laid up on a silver platter for you."

"Do you have any concept of what the war has taken from us, little girl?" Arnook asked, and Toph's already-short temper shortened considerably.

"First things first, _your majesty_, I am no _little girl._ But seriously? You're using _that_ argument? You're the only ones still fighting - " that wasn't quite true, since there were pockets of resistance all over the Outer Rim, but nothing to this degree " - a war you refuse to give up. How much did the war take from you, and how much did you throw away because you won't let a lost cause go?"

"Toph," Jet snapped, but she shook her head.

"No, Jet, _no_, don't you see?" she cried, agitated. "They want to use Aang to lash out at the Alliance and I _won't _stand with that! I signed on to bring _peace_ to the Outer Rim, not to start up a war I've already lost!"

"Toph," Katara said gently, and laid a hand on her shoulder. "I'm with you," she continued soothingly, and stood up to her father. "Father, I will not fight this war. I believe in Aang - and I believe it's time for _peace._ Please," she pleaded, voice soft, "don't do this."

Hakoda walked away, and she felt him do something with his hands, and then the crowd swarmed them.

* * *

><p>"Aang!" Katara screamed, and someone grabbed her and pulled her away, and she saw Toph pitching a fit, and her heart fell into her stomach - <em>no<em>, she thought, _please no, Father, don't do this, Daddy don't do this to me -!_

"Katara!" Aang's thin voice yelled, but was drowned out in the chaos. "Katara!" he cried, but it was more distant. The hands on her upper arm had her in a vicelike grip and she saw Jet with a gun _daring_ anyone to touch him and there was silver glinting in Mai's fingers and then _fire_ struck somewhere directly in front of her, and Zuko hit the man dragging her with a concussive blast, snarling at him.

"Are you okay?" he asked in a low voice, and she nodded. The people that hadn't backed away when Zuko and Iroh started firebending were held off by Jet, Sokka, Pipsqueak, the Duke, and Bee unholstering enough weapons to take down a freight train. To her left, she saw Suki, Ty Lee, Haru, and Mai working their way to the knot of calm in the crowd, Mai slinging knives in every direction while Suki and Ty Lee used a series of impressive martial arts moves to incapacitate their opponents and Haru ducked along with them, clutching his medical bag and looking frightened. Aang and Toph were nowhere to be seen.

"Toph!" Haru shouted, at the same time that Iroh cried, "Aang!"

Sokka snarled in the direction their father had gone. "You _coward!_" he yelled, and the chaos stopped cold as Hakoda turned. On either side, she could see two people clutching the unconscious Aang and spitting-mad Toph. Their father turned and came up to Sokka, then slapped him so hard that he hit the ground.

"You dare call _me_ coward?" he asked, voice breaking. "You, who ran away from the cause like your _whore_ of a sister?"

"Katara is a Companion," Sokka replied through gritted teeth, from the icy floor, "_not_ a whore."

"She's an Alliance whore," her father yelled, and she felt Zuko's hand on her arm clench. "I had thought, that by coming here, she was giving up that life and come back to _us_ - but I see," he said, glancing in contempt at her and Zuko's protective figure holding her arm, "that I was mistaken." There was a shaking and a loud crash in distance - Zhao's ship coming in to land, or the Reaver ship falling to the ground? She didn't know, and at this point, didn't care. This was what she had feared, why she had stayed away for so long. "Why did you go?" he snarled at her, ugly _betrayal_ on his face (_freak, they called, why doesn't the freak come out?_) "Were you already on their side? Had you already betrayed us?"

"No," she croaked, tears in her eyes. Zuko tried to step in front of her, but Hakoda pushed him away. It was killing her to see her father like this - she remembered him before, he had been loving, kind - the war had killed both of her parents, she saw now. Her father just hadn't stopped breathing yet.

"You go to the Core, you become a - a _whore_," he spat, "rutting with the _prince_ of the _Fire Nation_ - have you forgotten what they did to your mother? - and you come in here calling for _peace?_ With the Alliance _scum_ that ruined us?"

"This isn't about the war for you," Sokka snapped, jerking him away from Katara. "It's about revenge."

"Maybe it is," Hakoda replied sharply. "I'm the only one who remembers the cause Kya died for - "

"She died for _me!" _Katara screamed, and both her father and brother turned. She was crying openly now, and she reached through the ground and pulled the water out of it and then struck her father full in the chest with it, freezing him to the ground. He stared in shock while she gasped, sobbing. "_I _was the waterbender," she cried, "_I _was the _freak!_ I left so no one else would _die_ for me! You wanted the answer," she sobbed, dropping her hands and staring into her father's broken eyes. "There, now you have it. _I'm_ the reason your wife is dead. Not the war, not the Alliance, not even _Zhao_. It's _me_. If you want revenge," she choked, and hesitated for a split second, then whispered, "if you want revenge, it's me you'll be killing."

"Katara - " Sokka said gently, and she turned away.

"Zhao is coming," Mai said sharply, stepping over the iced-over Chief. "And we have to deal with him. He won't play fair, and I doubt we can reason with him, so we must prepare for a fight - show the Alliance that the power of the Avatar will not be contained. The family drama can come later," she said coldly, walking through the crowd and wrenching her now-bloody knives from the wounded. She began placing them back in their holsters on her arms and legs, apparently unconcerned, but Katara knew her better than to think she didn't care - she just believed so strongly in conservation of emotion. That was why Mai was the only one Jet trusted with the vials of morphine, that was why she and Katara had been such good friends, and that was why, now, she was saving her from this suffering. "Why don't we get to work repelling Zhao, hmm?"

"Thank you," she whispered, as Mai passed her, and she saw the tiniest smile on her friend's face.

* * *

><p>"How is he?" Katara asked, walking up behind him. He closed his eyes and leaned against the door they had barred behind them - within the room was his enraged father. At what he was raging, Sokka was no longer sure; it could have been the Alliance or Katara (he'd heard the word <em>whore<em> shouted as often as _Zhao_, and more distressingly, _sorry_). He'd known for a long time that his father was walking on thin ice. He'd been broken by his wife's brutal - and public - murder, but the loss of the war had killed him in a way that Sokka never would have thought, and this last revelation, that the person he'd been harboring a murderous hatred toward for over a decade was his own _daughter_... his own daughter who looked at him with his wife's eyes and spoke with her voice...

It was difficult, to listen to the screaming man behind the door and equate that with the kindly figure teaching him to fish, shoot, hunt on the wild plains.

"Ranting," Sokka replied, sighing, "about everything."

Katara had been crying lately, that was obvious - but she was strong, so much stronger than he'd ever given her credit for, and she swallowed hard. "Zhao is on the way. Toph felt his ship touch down, she says he's got a big army, marching for war."

"We've got big guns," he said calmly. Compared to his father, Sokka thought that facing Zhao would be downright _easy_. "Katara..." he started, and she held up a hand.

"Don't. I don't - please," she whispered, and he looked at her, hating himself. He tried vainly to remember all the things he said about _the cowardly bender_ and the _freak our mother died for_ over the years, but it all blurred into one. If he had known - he understood it all, now. It was never about cowardice, and his mother hadn't died senselessly - she'd sacrificed herself for her daughter.

Hell, if he'd known back then, he would have done the same thing. Katara was _worth_ that kind of sacrifice, whether she accepted it or even knew it or not.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked softly, and she closed her eyes. He saw tears fall down her cheeks.

"Because you were _right_," she replied, and he grabbed her by the shoulders, startling her into opening her eyes.

"Don't you _ever_ say that!" he exploded suddenly, choking back a sob. "You're not - I was _wrong_ to say those things. You're not a - you're not a freak, Katara," he said, throat burning. "You are my beautiful, incredible sister," he breathed, pulling her tight into a hug. She returned it, burying her face into his shoulder. "Even when you snot all over my clothes," he added, trying desperately to lighten the mood.

It worked. She laughed against his chest - a weak, watery laugh, but it was a laugh all the same. "Sokka?" she mumbled.

"Hmm?"

She pulled away, smiling weakly, eyes filled with tears. "Thank you," she said firmly, and then hugged him again, with all of her strength.


	17. Chapter Sixteen: The Siege of Sarqaq

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter sixteen: <strong>the siege of sarqaq<strong>

_"The Cylon War is long over, yet we must not forget the reasons why so many people sacrificed so much in the cause of freedom. The cost of wearing the uniform is high... but sometimes, it's too high. You know, when we fought the Cylons, we did it to save ourselves from extinction. But we never answered the question, why? Why are we as a people worth saving?"_  
>-William Adama, <em>Battlestar Galactica<em>

Suki was trying to teach Ty Lee how to use a gun, but it wasn't quite working. Ty Lee was very _physical_, in everything she did, and, quite frankly, she didn't have the core to be a gunslinger like Jet or Bee - she moved too much, which was always throwing her shots off, and they couldn't afford to waste the ammunition it might take to teach her how to stand and shoot properly.

"All right, well," she sighed, shivering a little, "you can help Haru with the medical stuff."

"Sure," Ty Lee chirped. "Only needles make me sick."

"Well," she grumbled, "you won't be getting stuck with them. Haru!" she called out, and the doctor turned, looking distracted. He was, she noted, watching where Toph was setting up her Big Bertha (Arnook and Hahn had refused point-blank to bring the plasma-powered Gatling gun, claiming that it would use too much ammunition to be worth the cost) and performing last-minute adjustments with the enthusiastic help of the Avatar. "Ty Lee can't shoot for hell, so she's going to be your assistant. How's that sound?"

"That's great, actually," he replied, joining them with one last, forlorn look at Toph (Ty Lee was looking between the two of them with glee). "Do you know anything about field medicine?"

"No," Ty Lee answered, "but I was a gymnast, so I kind of know health?"

"Well, it'll have to do," Haru muttered, and then motioned for Ty Lee to follow him. "Come with me. Hahn said that they have a pretty well-stocked infirmary, so we'll pack a bag for both of us, all right?"

Now without the one job she'd been assigned, she shuffled over to Toph and the Avatar, who waved at her with a wrench. "Hey, Toph," she said, and Toph waved a hand over her head absently.

"Suki," she told the Avatar, "Sokka's fuck-buddy."

"Toph!" she cried, gasping in horror - how did she know that? And then she remembered: Toph's extraordinary feet. Oh, how _embarrassing_.

"Relax," Toph replied, speaking around a screwdriver she'd stuck between her teeth, "he doesn't know what that means."

"What if he repeats it to Katara or Iroh?"

"Then I'm gonna laugh myself sick," she said matter-of-factly. Suki sighed; she'd only known Toph for a couple of days and the mechanic's utter lack of empathy and caustic attitude was already grating on her nerves. "Wrench," she said, and Aang handed over the wrench he'd been holding for her.

"What are you doing?" she asked, a bit afraid to know. The Big Bertha (as everyone called it, and although Suki wasn't sure where the "Bertha" bit came from, it was certainly _big_) was a huge cannon of the sort that was usually mounted to the tops of shuttles for aerial battles. Suki hadn't seen one since the war, and she was reasonably certain they'd all been decommissioned after U-Day.

"Making it better," Toph replied shortly, spitting the screwdriver out. The Avatar gave her an admonishing glare (that she ignored) and picked up the screwdriver with the tips of his fingers, then took a greasy cloth out of Toph's tool box and began to wipe it clean. "It's got lots of firepower now, but it's plasma-powered, and you can only put so much fire behind it before you melt the casing," she continued, "so I'm converting it to the old-school gunpowder-and-cannonballs. Arnook and Hahn say they've got barrels and barrels that have just been laying around forever. We're gonna use these to blow Zhao's walkers outta the water."

"Gunpowder?" she asked, and Toph started to huff an explanation, but Suki cut her off. "In this climate? Doesn't gunpowder become useless when wet?"

Toph hesitated, clearly having not expected Suki to know anything about weaponry. She shrugged. "Usually, but I think I can swing it. If not, hell, I'm the best mechanic in the 'Verse, I'll have it changed back 'fore you can spit."

"Really?" she challenged. "Best mechanic in the 'Verse? I thought they all worked for Sirius Inc."

Toph let out a bark of a laugh. "Sirius is filled with windbags who don't know a Capissen from a Montreal. They can't possibly know mechanics like I do. You know why?" she asked cheerfully, not to Suki, but to Aang. "Aang," she said, slow enough for him to decipher the words, "tell Suki why I'm awesome."

Aang grinned. "Toph bends earth," he said cheerfully. "Sees with earth."

"You _see_ with earthbending?"

"Yup," Toph replied cheekily, "I'm probably one of the best benders there is. I've been metalbending since I was a kid and didn't even realize it. Funny how the worlds turn, eh?" Underneath Toph's rock-steady tone, Suki caught the shades of insecurity. Toph was talking big because it scared her - that was probably why she'd gotten the Avatar to help her with the work: since bending was so familiar to him, she would feel less strange next to him.

"That is pretty impressive," she replied, crouching down and peering into the darkness of the weapon. That was one definite advantage Toph had: she didn't have to see, so it didn't matter how many shadows there were in her work. "How do you know?"

"What, that this is plasma-powered or that I can convert it to gunpowder with a few pipes?"

Suki rolled her eyes. "That you're an earthbender. It seems - strange. How do you do it?"

"I'm not really sure," Toph answered, hands still within the weapon, and then she shook her head and continued, "Iroh's been teaching me a few firebending moves, but they don't feel right, so I've been fixing them, like I fix _everything_," she said. "I just - feel it. It's another sense, that the earth is there and... I can feel everything that touches it, to a certain distance."

"That's incredible," Suki breathed. "I never... I wish I was a bender."

Toph's whole body went still at that, and she tilted her head curiously. "Why?" she asked, and Suki blinked.

"Why? It's the most incredible thing in the 'Verse, the way you just picked up the rock around those guys at the bar? Or how Iroh and Zuko were just slinging fire around? It's amazing."

"It's strange," Toph replied, sounding very small. She hesitated for a moment, and then spoke in a stronger voice, "Alliance says it's unnatural. My parents thought bending was unnatural. It's... they say that benders are mad," she added darkly. "Ghosts that don't know how to give up the past."

"That's 'cause they're scared of you," Suki said fervently. During the war, she'd been the last leader of one of the last remaining Great Forces - the legendary Kyoshi Warriors, that had held on since the Age of Bending and maintained a force, first on the Island of Kyoshi back on Earth That Was, and then they'd set up on Shadow and maintained Independent control of the planet. She hated the fact that she had been the last, that the legendary force had been crushed (along with their whole planet) on her watch, and she still dreamed idly of setting up a new order somewhere; so she remembered the Alliance's propaganda, about how the Kyoshi Warriors were relics of the past that needed to be given up, madwomen with fans that couldn't be trusted. It was the same thing with bending, only a lot older and more deeply rooted in a common fear: the unknown. "They can't control you if you can just tear apart the prison."

Toph pulled her hands out of the weapon and snatched the greasy cloth from Aang, who was watching the two of them with frustration and empathy - he understood at least some of what he was hearing, and it was obvious that he wanted to help, but didn't know how. "You think it's about control?" Toph asked, and Suki sighed.

"Yeah, I do. I'm not gonna beat around the bush," she said bluntly, "I'm an Independent, to the heart. I agree with you and Jet and Katara about the war, don't get me wrong, but _ideologically_, I still think that the less control other people have over my life, the better. Sure, I might screw it up royally, but at least those are my mistakes, and while it's hard as hell sometimes, it's worth more, to me. And I know the Alliance speaks pretty with their talk of "a chicken in every pot" but what it boils down to, at the personal level, is control. They might have good intentions," she added darkly, "and they might have done right for their own, but what they can't stand is someone who isn't like them. And benders will never fit into their mold for what a Good Citizen ought to be, so they stamped 'em out, the worst way possible - they didn't _have_ to kill the benders, they just had to convince the people that they were _better_ than them. Eventually, people stopped bending 'cause they stopped wanting to.

"That's my theory," she added finally, "about why you're a bender and I'm not - why Katara is but not Sokka. Katara needed something more than, well, this," she indicated to the Water Tribe around them, "and you needed a way to see the world around you. You can bend because some fundamental part of you had to - me and Sokka, though, we were content with our lot. We didn't look for anything more."

She fell silent, and Toph stayed very still, head tilted like she was listening intently, for a long moment, and then she smiled, and punched Suki hard in the shoulder. "You're smarter than you look," she said, voice soft. "When you put it like that... Well, I like it. And you're pretty cool, too."

"Thanks?" she replied, confused, and rubbed her shoulder. "If you think I'm cool, why did you hit me?"

Toph grinned cheerfully and turned back to her weapon. "It means I like you."

* * *

><p>Toph stood with the modified Big Bertha on the turret, fully loaded and ready to go. Beside her stood Aang, who had gathered the five benders together to do battle from the walls - Aang stayed with her, Katara and Iroh were on the far turret, and Zuko was in the central one with the largest weapon that the Water Tribe boasted. She had already decided that its name was Fred. She wasn't quite sure why - it just <em>felt<em> like a Fred (and she already had everyone calling it that, too).

She thought that Aang had stayed with her because he didn't have to speak to her to communicate - she felt his emotions through his heartbeat (which was currently racing) and he understood at least the tone of most of what she said. She was surprised that he wasn't attached to Katara, though, like he had been for most of the time since they'd been on the ship, but then, maybe he thought she might rather be on her own, not worrying over him.

But if Toph knew Katara, then she knew that the woman was probably worrying anyway.

The walls were lined with people - Sokka and Jet were in the very center of each wall, Haru on Jet's wall and Ty Lee on Sokka's (she thought privately that they would all be screwed if someone got hurt on Ty Lee's watch), while Mai and Suki were likewise spread out (at this distance, Mai's knives were useless, so she had taken up a powerful crossbow, but she was still fully armed in case of a breach). Bee and Longshot flanked Jet on either side, while Pipsqueak and the Duke were on either of Sokka's sides. They were as well-off as they were ever going to get.

"He's here," Toph said, feeling the rumblings of Zhao's walkers and snowmobiles crossing the final hill. Almost immediately, the chaos started as he began firing at them, even though he was still too far off to land any hits - she took deadly aim and began Big Bertha's firing sequence.

She worked like a charm - the first cannonball completely demolished the closest walker, and the second one took off another's leg. Beside her, Aang had crafted a whirlwind with his rebar-staff, steadily bouncing any oncoming artillery away from them - this was why he had been stationed at a corner, so he could deflect projectile weapons away from the walls. He'd be screwed if they used laser fire, but they hadn't broken out those guns yet, and Toph figured they'd just have to cross that bridge when they came to it.

She felt the forces on each side of the wall shoot, and then the second line pull forward and shoot - and back and forth. Most of the bullets missed their marks, while Big Bertha and Fred were winning most of the real kills.

Still, Zhao had heavy artillery, and he was getting close to being in range for his weapons to hit, and when he got to that point, they'd have to seriously watch their backs. Or their walls, as the case may be. "Aang," she said, ducking behind the wall, "they're coming in too hot for you. Stay down." He scowled - he knew what that meant, or if he didn't, then he inferred as much from her tone. He shook his head.

"You need me," he said firmly, and she nodded.

"Not as much as the 'Verse needs you," she replied, pushing him behind her and Big Bertha. He cried out in annoyance, but she didn't listen. Bullets flying scared her, she couldn't deny that - she couldn't _see_ the bullets! - but she stood by her belief that Aang needed to stay in one piece more than she did.

Dammit, she thought. She'd barely known the kid for a week and a half and she was already willing to die for him. Stupid people making her _care_.

"Incoming!" someone yelled, and then she felt the crash into the bottom parts of the wall. The people on top scattered like ants as the wall began to crumble, and she felt Suki and Haru - Haru! - slipping and she just - _stomped_ her foot into the stone and _wrenched_ it until it stayed still. It took unbearable concentration, but it gave their people time to flee before she collapsed to the floor of the turret, gasping. Aang crawled over to her, laid a hand on her shoulder, and then glanced over.

"You saved them," he said, and she felt him grin. He crawled away and began packing more powder into Big Bertha while she recovered from the heavy-duty bending. Oddly enough, his words and his grin made her feel warm inside - she had saved them, _she_, Toph Bei Fong, had reached out with a power she hadn't even known she'd had two weeks ago, and saved over a hundred lives.

_That_ was power. _That_ was how the Avatar was going to save the 'Verse. She just had to get him there to do it.

"Stay down," she called to him, and shuffled to the trigger mechanism. She chanced a look over the turret - Zhao's forces were swarming the fields (tower-class ships held almost ten thousand men, and it seemed like he'd emptied his ship to take the Avatar from the Water Tribe) - took aim, and fired, taking out the last walker. "Yes!" she cried, leaping into the air - _stupid_ - and a sharp pain lanced through her side. "_Cào ni m__ā!" _she hissed, and crumpled. Aang crawled over to her, and held his hands over the wound.

"Oh, _God_," she moaned. This _hurt_. Aang looked at her with a strange, fluttering, unfamiliar heartbeat.

"Haru," he said, and she shook her head.

"You have to stay," she replied firmly, and _he_ shook _his_ head.

"_Haru_," he repeated, stronger.

"No, Aang," she said, and then she felt something crash into the far turret. She gasped, horrified, and couldn't move fast enough - she couldn't - in the chaos of the falling bricks, she tried to make out any heartbeats, but it was too tangled-up and she was too far away. "Katara - Iroh!" she cried, trying to stand, but Aang shoved her down hard, and she could feel the slick blood on his hands and the shaking in his arms and the stony expression on his face - but there was something wrong with the way his heart was beating...

It was like he had a thousand hearts and they were all beating - and they were all _enraged_.

* * *

><p>Suki heard Sokka howl like a wolf when Katara's turret went down, and he started to run for her, but she and Pipsqueak both stopped him.<p>

"Sokka, you have to hold!" Pipsqueak yelled over the chaos of the gunfire and the powerful wind that had picked up. "You can't leave the breach! This is _Zhao_, Sokka," he shouted, and Sokka turned to him, eyes murderous.

"This is my sister, get out of my way!" he snarled, and Suki grabbed him and shoved him bodily away.

"And this bigger than us," she snarled in turn, and her heart cried at the look of pure _betrayal_ on his face. "Your sister is strong, she can take care of herself," she said, although she doubted privately that anyone could survive that, and now Toph had stopped shooting from her turret, but - something was shifting.

She looked up and saw the glow from Toph's turret, and felt the hurricane winds sweeping through the walls. It was the Avatar - not Aang, Aang was the boy with the cheerful smile who had been helping Toph modify Big Bertha; this was the _Avatar_, the pure cosmic power that Iroh wanted to use to unite the 'Verse, the sort of thing legends were made of - and he was floating in the midst of the flying bullets. He raised his arm and all of the ice and snow turned to water and rose into a flood that he pulled into a swirling cyclone.

The vortex was dotted with shards of ice that made an awful sound as they tore through the metal and the armor and the bodies, and she thought she heard the screaming even from here.

Unfortunately, while the Avatar's cyclone was destroying most of Zhao's forces, the man himself had already led a battalion of his army to the breach, and they were bearing down on them, beneath the Avatar's line of sight. She grabbed Sokka from where he was staring, slack-jawed, at the spectacle, and pointed.

"It's Zhao!" she cried, "he's making for the breach - what the hell does he think he's doing?"

She thought she might have known - the Duke had told her how, when Aang had learned that he'd been asleep for three thousand years, he had gone "glowy and windy" and Katara had held him until he calmed down. But Zhao definitely didn't have the kind of emotional pull that Katara had to bring Aang back from the Avatar's clutches - but perhaps he was planning to go in behind him and stick a bullet in his back. She wouldn't put it past the Admiral. She looked at Sokka, Pipsqueak, and the Duke, and they all nodded.

While the Water Tribe forces cheered on their Avatar, they shouldered their weapons and charged for Zhao, meeting his battalion head-on, followed closely by the other soldiers who had spotted him.

Sure enough, Zhao left his men to deal with them while he made for the Avatar, eyes alight with something akin to madness.

They ducked behind the fallen rocks that they had fled only ten or fifteen minutes before and began using them as cover. It was hard to aim in the chaos, with the screams and the icy noise and the wind echoing in her ears, and most of her shots went wide, but they startled her opponents into taking cover themselves. Sokka ducked down beside her, looking away with violent intent.

"Zhao is going for Aang. I have to stop him, no one else is looking."

She looked at him, and nodded. "I'll cover you," she replied, and he turned.

"That's suicide, Suki - "

"Your father said that Independence is a cause worth dying for," she snapped, reloading her rifle and changing out clips in her pistols. "I don't know about Independence anymore, but I know that Aang? He's worth my life - and so are you." He started to say something, but she shook her head. "Now shut up and _go!" _she shouted, then stood up and began shooting.

* * *

><p>Zuko barely recognized the scream as coming from his own mouth - the turret! Katara! <em>Uncle! <em>He had to get to them - he cursed the giant gun he was supposed to be manning and Zhao and the Alliance and the Water Tribe and _everything_ -

He jumped from the gun and jetted fire like Azula was always doing, leaping from his turret to the chaotic wall. He heard someone shout at him as he shoved people aside in his haste to reach the turret - Uncle, and Katara, and why the _hell_ had he put the two people he cared most about in the same place? That was just _asking_ for trouble! Stupid, stupid - he jolted as he hit the ground, a dark woman - the other Companion, he realized, a vaguely familiar woman he had only met a couple of times before - crawled off of him.

"You _idiot_," she snapped, jerking her crossbow up and putting a few bolts over the wall. "You just made yourself a target for all of them."

"I have to get to - "

"Shut up," she shouted, pushing him aside brusquely. "No one's going in or out of that right now - you have to let the dust settle."

"They could be dead by then," he snarled, and she turned to him, furious. He didn't know her well, but he did know that she did _not_ show this sort of emotion.

"And if you lead the army over to them while they're trying to hit you? Don't be _stupid_. No one's getting into that rubble until the fight is over. You want to help Katara and Iroh? _Pick up a gun and start shooting_."

He glared at her in fury, but as the initial haze of panic cleared, he recognized the wisdom in her words. She was right - he just didn't want to hear her. What would Uncle say in this situation?

_The world makes you, nephew. Your duty, your job, your purpose - live in it._

Uncle would never want him to die in the futile attempt to reach him, and neither would Katara. He closed his eyes for a moment and imagined her touch, her hands - she would understand if he didn't get to her immediately, but she would _never_ forgive him if he died trying to reach her. He opened his eyes, and took the gun that the Companion threw him, then joined her on the wall.

* * *

><p>Katara opened her eyes and coughed - it was dark and dusty and she hurt all over, but she could feel all of her extremities and she had a little room to wiggle. She shoved her shoulder against the rock that had almost bisected her but found it too heavy to move, so she began to work at the smaller ones.<p>

Once she had some crawlspace, she began moving. She wasn't sure of the direction since she'd been tossed about in the fall, but at this point, any direction was progress. "Iroh?" she called, and waited. She heard a cough from off to her right and began digging that way. She drew in a sharp breath when she reached him - there was blood on his mouth and she couldn't see his lower half for the rocks. "_Wo de tian a_," she breathed, and pulled on the air, yearning for water. There was only a little.

She began pushing the rocks off of him - oh, but there was so much _blood_ and there were so many rocks and his breath was coming in wet and she was crying. "Just hang in there," she choked, "I can - there's this trick, I can heal you. Just hang in there, Iroh."

"Ka - Katara," he coughed, "It's too late."

"No," she cried, "it's not, don't you say that, don't you talk like that, Iroh."

She pulled on the blood that was pooling on his clothes and her hands and the ground, and she pulled on the air, and she pulled on the ground, until she had enough water to make a large, fluid glove that she held over what looked like the worst of it. Her hand glowed brilliantly, lighting up the gloom - she could see dust swirling in the air and blood on the rocks from where Iroh had fallen - and it seemed to start the healing, but it was just - it was just so _much_.

"Katara," he repeated, reaching out with one hand (where was the other one?) and grabbing her by the cheek, "tell - Zuko," he gasped, "Aang is the key, protect _Aang_," he coughed, and his hand slipped against her cheek, but then he dragged on some deep well of strength and pulled himself toward her, clutching her face. "Azula must be stopped - she knows - secret," he choked, retching, and Katara held her watery hands up to him, trying to hold on to his failing life. "Zuko - when my son - after my son - "

"Iroh, stop trying to talk," she cried, "let me heal you, I can _heal_ you - "

"Stop," he croaked, and looked her in the eyes. "Tell Zuko, he was like a son to me. Lu Ten - " he said, and then gasped like he was trying to say something more, but she watched in horror as the light faded from his eyes.

"Iroh!" she screamed, clutching his bloody hand, but there was no pulse left. "_Iroh!"_


	18. Chapter Seventeen: With Grace

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>chapter seventeen: <strong>with grace<strong>

_"I never knew what a friend was until I met Geordi. He spoke to me as though I were human. He treated me no differently from anyone else. He accepted me for what I am. And that, I have learned, is friendship. But I do not know how to say goodbye._"  
>-Data, <em>Star Trek: the Next Generation<em>

Sokka made for Zhao, who made for Aang. They all reached their destination at the same time.

A bullet went through Aang, but Sokka's tackling of Zhao knocked it wide, so that it struck him in the shoulder rather than the heart, like Zhao was going for. Zhao let out a scream and turned to Sokka, but the damage was done: Aang stopped glowing and collapsed. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ty Lee running for him, medical bag in hand, while Suki, Pipsqueak, and the Duke sunk bullets into anyone who tried to stop her.

Aang would be taken care of, he saw, and focused wholly on Zhao. First his mother, now Katara, who he had spent over seven years searching for and only just now found, who he had unknowingly wronged in so many ways, who was so strong and so heartbroken and so damn _happy _to see him - Katara, his baby sister, the one he had _promised_ he would always protect - _Katara -_

Rage boiled over Sokka's thoughts, and all he saw was red.

* * *

><p>It was Jet who first saw it - the ruined turret was <em>pulsing<em>. Their forces had been mostly focused on holding off the remnants of the army that had been left after Aang's cyclone, but there was a frightening amount left behind that was either too stupid or too scared of Zhao to flee, and they had their hands full.

"What the hell?" he whispered, and Mai turned as the outer rubble of the turret exploded outwards in a shower of red ice. In the midst of the storm, a single figure walked calmly out into the battlefield, and then whirled, lashing out with slivers of ice that cut a straight line through everyone in a good fifteen-foot radius.

"Katara," Mai breathed, and Jet saw heartbreak flit over Mai's face.

Katara twisted her hands in a strange form and _pulled_ and the whole line of men jerked forward and - it happened so slowly, slowly while they watched - the blood within their bodies was pulled from their veins. It started like a particularly nasty bruise formed over their faces and hands - and they just _fell_ from massive hemorrhaging - just like _that._

"Katara!" Mai called, and then leaped over the wall.

"_Bàojúhu__ā__!_" he snarled, and followed her. _Idiot_ - didn't she _see_ that Katara wasn't thinking straight, wouldn't recognize friend from foe? He chased her through the fleeing troops until they reached the half-moon of fallen bodies. Katara turned, eyes wild, on Mai, pulling with her hands, and Mai froze, but then, as he watched, Katara's eyes cleared and she dropped her hands, gasping in horror. Mai fell to the ground, and both he and Katara bolted for her.

"Mai!" Katara screamed, sobbing hysterically, "_no, no, no!_"

"I'm all right," Mai croaked, as Jet helped her to her feet. Katara stayed on the ground, looking around like she was only just seeing the carnage she had wrought. "Are you?"

"I - Mai, I'm - God, I'm so sorry," she breathed, lunging forward and pulling her friend into a tight hug. "I don't - I didn't - "

"Shh," Mai murmured, "it's over now. Ty Lee is with Aang, Zuko's on his way here, I'm sure. Where is Iroh?"

Jet thought it was obvious, really, but the look on Katara's face told him everything that the blood all over her hands didn't. He looked to the ruined turret. "It'll take some work to get in there," he said, looking around the battlefield - now that the army was routing against the godlike power they had witnessed (and with the curious absence of Zhao), the Water Tribe was cheering and celebrating. It might take a while to convince them to go digging in their walls.

"Jet, he's gone," Katara choked, and he turned to her sharply.

"Yeah, and?" he replied. "Never leave a comrade on the battlefield, dead or alive."

Mai looked at him like she was seeing something she had never seen before, and then nodded. "Then let's get to work - Katara, go find Haru, you're bleeding," she said lightly, voice strangely affectionate. Katara turned to her with deadened eyes, and Mai just smiled, a real, genuine smile, so rare on her face, then leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead tenderly. "We'll take care of Iroh, Katara," she said quietly. "Go, take care of yourself."

* * *

><p>"Sokka," she cried, grabbing him bodily and pulling him away. She'd never imagined that he could express that kind of <em>feral<em> rage before, so familiar and horrible to her at the same time. "Sokka, it's over - he's dead, _Sokka!_"

Slowly, Sokka's eyes cleared and he allowed her to pull him away from the pulp that had once been an Admiral. She turned away from the body in disgust and focused instead on Sokka. "My sister - my mother - my _father_," he choked, sobbing, "even Aang - how many people is he going to kill?"

"No one, anymore," she said, and then Pipsqueak called out a cheer.

"Sokka!" he cried, joyous, "Sokka, it's Katara! She's alive!"

He looked up, pure _hope_ on his face, and they both saw the distant blue figure of his sister, picking her way through the destruction toward them.

"Breathe, Sokka," she murmured, pulling him into a hug. "It's over, _bao bèi_. It's over."

* * *

><p>(on <em>freedom<em>)

"Morning, beautiful," someone said - someone that sounded like Jet - and Toph groaned.

"Where am I?" she croaked, and a thin voice next to her left ear replied.

"Home," Aang said brightly, and touched her face so she could feel him smile. She reached out and took his hand.

"You're all right, _xiao hóuzi,_" she said weakly, and she felt him nod, but the smile fell off his face.

"Iroh..." he whispered, and Toph's heart clenched in her chest - no, not Grandpa! He couldn't - he was invincible, and he had moon peaches, and he was the first real friend she'd probably ever made and - no, _no_.

"Jet?" she breathed, and she heard him a shift a little beside her.

"I'm afraid so," he replied quietly. "We pulled him out of the rubble, and Katara said that she was able to get to him before..." he let out a deep breath, and then leaned on the bed. "You're the only one still recovering, Tophlet," he said, tacking on the nickname affectionately. It was the first time he'd ever said it in a way that wasn't mocking - that sounded like she was someone he _cared_ about - and it was also the first time that she didn't mind the stupid nickname. "We waited for you to wake up before we... laid him to rest."

"He ought to go home," Toph whimpered. "With his family - "

Aang shook his head. "Family _here_," he said, and she felt the tears slide down his face. "Iroh has family here."

* * *

><p>(outside sarquq)<p>

Katara watched, dry-eyed, as Zuko and Jet marched Iroh's bier to the center of the field. Zuko had said that Iroh had always loved the open plains, the way the world seemed to stretch out forever, and even though they were iced over and still drenched with blood from the fighting, he had said that this is where his uncle would have wanted it.

He'd been remarkably tight-lipped about the whole ordeal, and Katara wondered just how he planned to bury a man in permafrost, but she was starting to think that he wasn't going to bury his uncle at all.

After all, they were part of the _Fire_ Nation.

"At home," Zuko said softly, voice almost carried away in the wind, "At home," he repeated, louder, "there's a sage who recites some ancient poem over bodies, preparing their spirits for moving on. I'm no sage, and I don't - I don't pretend to know anything about - where Uncle is now," he said, swallowing hard. "But if anyone can find their way to reincarnation, or to Nirvana, or heaven, or whatever is out there... it's Uncle. So," he started, seemingly unsure of how to continue, but then she stepped forward and squeezed his hand. He stood up a little straighter. "Go with grace," he whispered, "to whatever future. He used to tell me that," he said, louder, so the assembled crew could hear. "He'd pick me up and put me on his knee whenever my father would - and he'd say, "Prince Zuko, listen to me, not him: go with grace, to whatever future. The world makes you, you don't make the world. You just live there." So, from us still living here," he said shakily, and swallowed again, squeezing her hand tightly, "may you go with grace," he breathed, and then let go of her hand.

He performed a short, quick firebending form, and shot a jet of flame onto the bier. Iroh's body was quickly consumed, while Zuko stood in the flickering of the flames, face pale and half-shadowed.

"He deserved better," he said quietly, and she put an arm around his shoulders. Zuko shook his head. "He deserved - he should have died surrounded by loving family, he _deserved_ that. I wasn't - I wasn't _there._"

She blinked away tears. "Zuko," she whispered, and he bowed his head, "Zuko, he loved you like a son. He wanted you to know that."

He turned to her abruptly, wet-eyed but without crying. "What did he say to you? You said that he told you something important, but you wanted to wait to tell me. What was it?"

She looked into his eyes and saw the dangerous light of _obsession_ there - so like her father after her mother's death - and fear gripped her. What would he do, if she told him? Would he, too, chase the specter of revenge? "He said," she started, and then swallowed hard. "He said that Aang is the key, and that Azula has to be stopped." She took a deep breath. "He mentioned that she knew a secret," she said quietly, and he scowled.

"I wish I knew what that might be," he muttered.

"We'll get through this," she told him fiercely, because she believed it - she believed in Aang, and she believed in Zuko, and they could _do_ this. "You and I, Aang, Toph, Jet... all of us," she said quietly, clutching his hand, "we're going to put you on your throne. And we're going to bring peace to the 'Verse."

He looked at her, eyes distant. "How do you know?" he asked softly, and she forced herself to smile.

"Because I believe in you," she replied, and when he looked at her, he was _her_ Zuko again, not the scary, obsessed Zuko she had glimpsed in his eyes. She could - _would_ - save him from becoming _that_ Zuko - from becoming her father.

"I - " he started, and then stopped. "Thank you," he breathed, like it wasn't what he really wanted to say.

* * *

><p>(on the tower-class spaceship <em>desdemona<em>)

"So, Zhao fell to the Water Tribe he so stupidly underestimated," Azula said, arms crossed, looking at the report. "Fool," she scoffed. "He expected another Unification War."

"What war is this, my lady?" the navigator asked tentatively, and Azula smiled.

"Do you know your history, Quinn?"

"I... know some history," Quinn replied uncertainly. Azula stepped forward, speaking not just to the navigator but to the bridge as a whole.

"In the Age of Bending, there was a legendary Fire Lord," she explained, a hand over her heart. "The Fire Lord Azula I, my namesake. She was famous for doing what no _man_ for a hundred years had been able to do - she took the Earth Kingdom city of Ba Sing Se, the _last_ major city of the Earth Kingdom, and its foundation. She also found - and sealed - the Avatar. Now, now," she said, holding out a hand, as her subjects began to comment. "There are secrets that until now have not been shared. The Avatar is no myth - in fact, I believe that he was instrumental in Zhao's recent defeat. Our task," she said beatifically, but it was really _her_ task, "is to find and eliminate this threat to our peace.

"We will eliminate _all _threats to the Alliance," she added cheerfully. The Alliance was hers to command, hers to lord over - all she had to do was remove everyone who opposed her. Sure, that would involve killing a few other members of the Alliance, but she didn't mind that overmuch. They were all stuffy old men who had no idea what _power _meant.

Azula knew what power _really_ meant.

She smiled.


	19. Postlude: Forward

**as the turn of the worlds**

book one: objects in space  
>postlude: <strong>forward<strong>

_"Storm's getting worse."_  
><em>"We'll pass through it soon enough."<em>  
>-River Tam and Malcolm Reynolds, <em>Serenity<em>

postlude  
>(on <em>freedom<em>, leaving atmo on st. albans)

"So," the voice said, and he turned. Mai was standing calmly in the hallway. Katara was curled up in the no-longer-spare shuttle with the prince, on the bed she'd snatched from her old home in the Water Tribe; Aang and Haru were in the Infirmary with Toph; Pipsqueak, the Duke, and Bee were all playing poker, waiting for Longshot to get them into the black before he joined them; Suki, Sokka, and Ty Lee were all taking much-deserved rests - it was as normal as his home ever got.

It still felt somehow diminished without the old man making tea, but he supposed that he'd get over that soon enough.

"So," he repeated, arms crossed. "I stand corrected," he said with a reasonable facsimile of cheer, "about ladies and war. You and your secret Companion lover proved me wrong."

"Jet? Admitting defeat?" she asked, amusement in her voice. "This truly is a momentous occasion."

"Yeah, yeah, memorize the feeling," he said, "'cause it ain't ever happening again."

She laughed a little, and then a strangely comfortable silence fell for a moment. "That was kind of you," she said finally, and he raised an eyebrow. "Iroh. Going back for him."

Jet shrugged. "Least I could do."

"And being a pallbearer," she added, something indiscernible in her tone. "That's generally reserved for family and close friends."

He made a face at her, knowing where she was going with this line of thinking. "Toph woulda done it, but she was still injured."

"You volunteered," she said lightly.

"Yeah," he conceded, "I did."

She fell quiet again, and the serene look on her face changed. "So, what now?" she asked, and he looked at her. She was looking away from him, at the bridge and the stars just visible from this angle. She really was beautiful - he'd noticed it plenty of times before, but it was especially striking today.

"Now?" he said, and leaned against the wall. "Now, we go forward."

**end of book one.**

TRANSLATIONS (Mandarin Chinese unless otherwise stated)

_dong (le) ma _- "are we clear (here)?"  
><em>le-se<em> - "garbage"_  
>chòu biaozi<em> - "stinking whore"_  
>g<em>_āi s__i_ - "damn it!"_  
>bàojúhu<em>_ā__ - _"fuck me in the ass" (lit. "explode the chrysanthemum")_  
>t<em>_ā__ m__ā__de niao_ - "goddamn it" (lit. "his mother's dick")_  
>campa<em> (Nauhatl) - "where"_  
>si pì yan<em> - "damned asshole"_  
>néih hóu<em> (Cantonese) - "Hello"_  
>ngo hài b<em>_ī__ndouh? Néih giu m__ā__t'yéh mèhng a?_ (Cantonese) - "Where am I? Who are you?"_  
>ngóh m`h'mìhng baak!<em> _Appa! Yáuh b__ī__ndouh Appa! _(Cantonese) - "I don't understand! Appa! Where is Appa?"_  
>fong sam<em> (Cantonese) - "don't worry"_  
>xiao tàitai<em> - "mistress" (lit. "little wife")_  
>cào - <em>"fuck"_  
>nayaafabaa<em> (Inuit) - "hello"_  
>pablan<em> (Inuit) - "welcome"_  
>fàng pì<em> - "bullshit"_  
>gou niáng yang de<em> - "son of a bitch" (lit. "raised by a dog mother")_  
>cào ni m<em>_ā_ - "fuck your mother"_  
>wo de tian a - <em>"oh dear god"_  
>bao bèi<em> - "baby" (lit. "treasured object," term of endearment)_  
>xiao hóuzi<em> - "little monkey"


End file.
